Member-only story
A right to entitlement
We often assume we are entitled to something, but that is literally only half of the story
Years ago, my (British) colleagues and I had what we thought was a brilliant idea for a practical joke. We were in a French chateau, at a debriefing session concluding a large international project with ten Germans on the team. Our plan was to sneak into the meeting room late that evening with all our spare towels, and place them on the chairs, a reference to a curious German tourist custom.
Well, perhaps not that curious. You may remember that, once upon a time, German citizens holidaying around the Mediterranean had a reputation of getting up at the crack of dawn to place towels on the best placed loungers around the hotel pool, to assert the temporary ownership they believed to be entitled to (to the detriment of the not-so-early birds among the guests, naturally). In the event, we never got to see the reaction of our German colleagues at the meeting, since the staff of the venue had got up at the crack of dawn and removed the towels before breakfast. (In hindsight, I guess the joke was not all that funny anyway.)
Visible when there is a conflict
Entitlements permeate social interaction in numerous ways. Some are enshrined in law, for example entitlements…
