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I went into one of my favourite local restaurants recently and sat down at a table near the door. The place was practically empty, so most of the tables were free. After a couple of minutes, a member of the staff came up to me and said, “I see you’ve seated yourself.”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Didn’t you see the ‘Please Wait to Be Seated’ sign?” she asked angrily. I’d been to that restaurant many times and, of course, I’d seen the sign before.
“Gosh, I didn’t notice it,” I said.
“Well, you may have to wait some time for the waiter to come to you,” she said. There was no other customer within 50 feet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had ignored the notice. Sometimes the American love of order goes too far. To take another example, some years ago, America’s airlines began requiring passengers to present photographic identification when checking in for a domestic flight. The first time I heard of this was when I showed up to catch a plane at an airport 120 miles from my home.
“I need to see your picture ID*,” said the check-in agent.
“Really? I don’t think I have any,” I said and began emptying my pockets, and then pulling my cards from my wallet. In the end, I found an ID with my picture. It was an old driving licence. “I can’t accept it; it’s fifteen years old,” he said. “I need something with a recent picture of you.”
I took a deep breath and searched my luggage. Finally, I remembered I had a copy of one of my books with a recent photo of me on the cover. I handed it to him proudly. He looked at the book and then at the printed list of acceptable IDs. “Books are not on our list,” he said.
“I’m sure it isn’t, but it’s still me. It couldn’t be more me.” I lowered my voice and looked closer at him. “Are you seriously suggesting that I ordered this book to be printed so I could get on a plane to Buffalo?”
He looked hard at me for another minute, then called a colleague. They exchanged opinions and called more people to discuss it. We ended up with a crowd of three check-in agents, their manager, the manager’s boss and two baggage handlers.
“What is the point of all this anyway?” I said to the manager. “Why do you need a picture ID?”
“It’s a Federal Aviation Administration rule,” he said.
“But why is it a rule?”
“You see the requirement is not simply to identify yourself, but to identify yourself in a way that precisely matches a written instruction,” he answered.
In the end, the manager told the agent to check me in, but warned me not to try anything like that again.
Na podstawie: Bill Bryson, Notes from a Big Country
* ID – identity document.
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