OPINION
Sterile Society
I sat at the computer, watching an image of a can that had fallen to the floor and burst, red tomato sauce splattered on the tile. “Make sure to stay with the spill,” a woman’s voiceover lectured. “Don’t leave the site even if you are near a cleaning station. Either use your radio or wait for a coworker to watch the spill while you bring back the necessary cleaning supplies.”
It was my first day training as a sales floor associate for a large retail chain, and I was incredulous at some of the protocols. Really? I thought. Rules dictate a worker must stay with any type of spill at all times for liability reasons. But no one is issued a two-way radio except management — what if I don’t see another coworker for an hour while I stand there like a fool? It’s tomato sauce, not nuclear waste. Let me just get a mop and be done with it.
Joseph Semprevivo, founder and CEO of Joseph’s Lite Cookies, describes his struggle to navigate the endless regulations surrounding food safety:
As a bakery, I’m under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Agriculture, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA]. I also have to deal with the state health agency. They all have different rules. If those rules contradict one another, it’s not their problem — it’s mine.
He recounts how an FDA inspector at his plant told him the doors swinging outward in the cookie baking area were a code violation. Joseph changed to inward-swinging doors. Months later, an Ag Department inspector told him the inward-swinging doors need to be changed to swing out.
Joseph goes on:
Another time, we didn’t include the word “coconut” in the allergy section of the package. We didn’t think it was necessary, as these were coconut cookies. All that packaging had to be redone, too. That cost me $68,000.
I think of how our American cities are precisely zoned, designated districts, the boxy 5-over-1 apartments rising up almost identical in their neat rows. Efficient but soulless. Heaven forbid a building that doesn’t match the current aesthetic ever make it past local building codes. Manicured suburbs divided perfectly into lonely, segregated lots.
How a patient can be delayed access to a common yet crucial antibiotic due to a small mistake on her insurance record, nearly causing her life. A massive administrative bureaucracy intent on perfection in its records over getting help to those in need.
How even simple actions turn into a series of warnings and drawn out processes. “Caution — contents hot,” reads our coffee cup lids. Well yeah, no shit. “Tear here to open,” instructs a package of tortillas. I don’t need to be told how to open a tortilla bag.
All of this in the name of safety and order. These are among the scenarios that have stuck with me as in recent years I’ve developed a disdain for how, at virtually every turn, one is greeted in America with endless rules that strip away common sense, character, and humanity. A society so safe relative to other parts of the world, yet so antiseptic, so bland, so sterile. Pockets of vitality exist, of course. But the overarching structure of our lives seems to be dictated by these insane minutia.
All of this said, I want to emphasize that I’m truly in awe of such a civilization that is prosperous enough to even consider needing any of these rules and regulations. I’m appreciative and at times humbled that the things I take for granted are things some others in the world can only dream of. I’m not doubting that there’s anything good to be found in the system. Rather, I’m lamenting that it’s buried so far under lack of common sense that it’s often not visible.
Yet alongside the gratitude, I simultaneously feel an overwhelming disdain for the smothering safety. I have an urge to throw a wrench into the orderliness for a moment—let’s see everyday people sell their wares on the sidewalks of the business district, street musicians making a racket, ivy vines overtaking the broad side of a skyscraper instead of being cleared the moment they appear. Flip the health inspector the bird when he comes to my home town farmer’s market and tells us our stall isn’t “authorized.” Let the leaves collect on the lawns for a second, paint the fences bright orange and pink. Watch the HOA ladies faint from shock and despair.
Such rebellion, yes? Hardly. But it would be a start, and it would be lovely.
Can we not have the latest breakthroughs in medicine and still also have the humanity to discern when an administrative error can be overlooked and a woman receive the medication she needs? Can we make food safe, yet not make it near impossible for small and mid-size businesses to navigate the marketplace amid all the bureaucracy?
I don’t exactly know what the solution is, if there’s balance to be had, and how. In my humble opinion, though, we need more than just policy changes, although they could go far. I realize some of this madness is also just who we are: the strict HOA ladies are our neighbors. Modern minimalism with its clean lines and muted color palette is in right now. And we probably wouldn’t need such ridiculous liability protocols in place if everyday people weren’t so sue-happy. But the sue-happy are also incentivized because they know they will probably be compensated…
For now, I’m just going to make sure I live to the fullest within my sphere. I’ll try to channel my bizarre desire to shout and throw dirt on the perfection into something more productive. Perhaps a quiet disregard of some ridiculous rules with a kind smile on my face. Be an example. Perhaps a civil discussion with my friends, neighbors, random passersby. And I’ll be sure to clean up the damn tomato sauce as I see fit.
