At the Guggenheim, which was surrounded by people in beret's wearing black and smoking cigarettes (seriously), a fascinating interaction occured. This is my favorite story of the year so far, so listen up cuz its short. Shannon & I go to the cafeteria for lunch. After buying our food, we see that all the tables have people sitting at them. Its a nice day, so we take our trays outside. Before we can sit down, an employee comes out and says:

"I'm sorry, you aren't allowed to eat out here. You'll have to share a table with someone"

Seeing that we look baffled, and perhaps wanting to defend his actions, he adds:

"It's because of the trays and plates."

There are two obvious courses of action here, both of which I think are non-optimal. One of them is to give up and go in. The other is to get mad at him for enforcing a policy that isn't his, yell or snap or mutter something angrily in order to release some of the frustration resulting from being told what to do, to try to build back a little self-esteem by tearing down his (the methodology of jerks and bullies).

I did neither. I looked him in the eye, held his gaze for a second, and said quietly:

"Do you think we are going to steal these plates?"

He looked at me for a few seconds, and replied firmly: "No", then turned around and went back inside, leaving us to eat in peace.

As a libertarian, I don't believe in abstract rules as entities or putting the blame for things on policy or organization. "Sorry, just doing my job" is a cop-out, an attempt to separate the inseperable - a person and their actions. Even if you are enforcing a rule you don't agree with, at least have the balls to say "No, *I* choose not to let you do that". Everything comes down, in the end, to interactions between human beings. Never forget it.

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