Play by the rules?

I have always been one with a great respect for rules. Respect? I actually effing depended on them so that I knew what to do under any given circumstances. Otherwise, I would only blink blankly like your smartphone would if there were no operating system in it to tell it what to do.

Now, these digital monsters have it easy. I mean, they have their rules written in code and, as long as they do what the code said, things were hunky-dory. I mean, yeah, their users could get frustrated and pull their hair out because the digi-monster was not doing what THEY wanted it to do but what does the digi-monster care anyway about that.

But, when you are a human...I mean, yeah, there are rules, alright but the thing is you are not always supposed to work as per the rule. I mean, there are times when the rule says you can do something but you are really not supposed to do it without getting the skin ripped off you. Like, say, your office hours may end at 6 PM as per rule, you may have nothing to do but if you promptly leave at 6 PM, your boss will tear a strip off you the next day for lack of dedication or some such shit. (Well, for you lucky non-working guys, it's like that run out for backing up. It's there in the rules but you are not supposed to do it. See?)

And then there are those things which are specifically prohibited in the rules but...I mean, like we guys were not supposed to indulge in bribery of Govt Officials and it's not like you have an expenditure head 'Bribes to Govt Officials' like you have, say, 'Salaries'. Try getting anywhere by sticking to the prohibition laid out in that rule, though. (Again, for the lucky drones, it's like sledging, you see. NOT allowed but...)

So, yes, there are these rules and there are these unwritten rules. You need to first learn the rules, then learn which of them are against the 'spirit of the game', which are prohibited by the rules but are IN the 'spirit of the game' and...

Around there, I get so dizzy that I do not know whether I am coming or going. And THEN they start talking about unwritten limits to unwritten rules...I really had lost it as far as office went, so let me give you the non-working version...you can call a man any names when you sledge, except...and the exceptions will be based on who is doing the 'excepting'. On one occasion, 'Maaki' was considered more acceptable than 'monkey'. In South India, at least, one would probably see the former as more insulting than the latter.

Broadly, one may say, people fall between the extremes of 'Do nothing that is not explicitly permitted' and 'Do anything that is not explicitly prohibited'. But the leaders are those who believe in 'Do anything that does not invite instant punishment'...thereby proving that a law is only as good as its implementation. And, then, what they do and do not do becomes the unwritten rules of behavior!

What with rules, unwritten rules, unwritten exemptions and limits to unwritten rules yada yada...Life would be simpler as a Smartphone!