Recently at my place of employment, the main women’s restroom was being redone. This left just a single toilet for all the women in the whole building. This created a long line to the women’s toilet. This created lots of loud talking and laughter. This created one small problem.
Some of the commotion was interfering with some important recorded phone calls at a nearby cubicle, so the next day an email was sent from management asking everyone to keep the volume level of their talking down while waiting for the restroom. As the line formed outside the restroom all was pleasant and some quiet chattering was taking place in the line. Suddenly, a female employee walked by and said “SHHHH! There’s no talking by the restrooms!”. She was very serious. She made one young lady rather nervous, making her think she was doing something wrong.
The “Shushing” employee reminded me of the legalistic Pharisees I had been reading about in Matthew. I’m sure this lady thought at some level that she was helping the company and being a good employee. She invented her own “rules” around management’s “law” that there be no loud talking out side of the restroom. Management made a law that was meant to provide freedom:
- Freedom for nearby employees to work uninterrupted by loud noises.
- Freedom from potential law suits arising from angry clients feeling like they are not being taken seriously because of all the laughter going on.
- Freedom for those to wait to still be able to have a conversation at a reasonable volume.