Coronavirus: Social etiquette in the age of COVID-19

I was trying to keep a safe distance when a man in the queue got too close and refused to move. I’m embarrassed to admit what happened next …

RendezView. Large group of people waiting in line. Queue. (Pic: iStock)

I am a conscientious citizen. I am ridiculously honest, I recycle hard and soft plastics, I haven’t had a parking fine in years, and when every government and health body in the country tells me to keep 1.5 metres away from others during a worldwide coronavirus pandemic, I heed their call.

Social distancing may be new and strange to most of us, but if it helps protect lives I’ll comply, even if it seems contrary to what for so long was deemed normal. On flights between Sydney and Melbourne this week, for example, I chose the back row because it seemed wiser, if I was to have anyone seated around me, that at least there was no one behind. (As it turned out there was almost no one on either flight anyway).

Walking with a friend, I have tried to keep a bigger distance between us than normal. In the tight aisles of the busy local pharmacy, I have sought the one that has no customers.

And when I went to renew my drivers licence this week, and had to join the line of customers outside, I deliberately kept my distance from the woman in front. Then a man joined the line behind me.

The distance he maintained was exactly the distance that would have been considered socially acceptable in our pre-Covid19 lives. But that distance has now been deemed unsafely close. So I stepped to the side and slightly forward to keep enough space as we waited to be served. And then he inched forward.

Each time someone was allowed inside, and the line progressed slowly, he moved forward again, and I kept moving to the side until I was almost so far into the footpath that I risked knocking in to passers-by.

When the woman in front suddenly left the line, I rejoined the queue. Rather than maintaining the larger gap between us, the man behind walked right up to me again.

So I finally told him – as if he needed an explanation – that I was trying to keep a safe distance, and asked if he would please step back. His response? “Stop panicking.” And no, he didn’t move.

I am embarrassed to admit that our discourse quickly descended from there as I lost my cool (which only added to his notion that I was panicking) until eventually a staff member intervened and threatened to make us both leave the line. The situation only ended when the staff member asked the man, as I had, to please take a step back, “or she will keep panicking”. (I really needed to renew my licence so I had to force myself into silence at this point.) And then he moved.

We live in tense times and we’re often responding in ways that, just last month, might have seemed unimaginable. This is not me. I don’t argue with strangers, and if I see someone who is about to, I usually tell them not to waste their time.

Was I wrong to have spoken up? Maybe I should have just stayed in the footpath and let it be. What’s really angered me though is the notion, which he spat out, that I was panicking and that somehow this made me a lesser person.

I am concerned today, yes, but not panicked, and it’s made me realise that now, more than, ever, we need accept that this is not a sign of weakness. The person you’re standing too close to may have an auto-immune disease. They may suffer from crippling anxiety, in which case, if they were truly panicked, why make things worse, especially it’s counter to all that we are being advised?

There are many things beyond our control at the moment. Bewilderment is clogging the air. But there are ways we can make this time better. Thank a supermarket worker. Don’t take offence if someone keeps their distance. Smile. And consider kindness as the new default position.