Hæ!
I was at the gym this morning and happened to see this person that I used to know. Or, well, I technically still know her, but my quota with her expired long ago.
What this means is that she no longer greets me. This even though my interactions with her about 20 years ago were fairly regular over a few-week period. I even gave her a lift home once from an event, and we chatted the whole way and for at least 15 minutes while sitting outside her house.
But now? We’re strangers. 🤷♀️
So, what is this quota of which I speak? Allow me to dip into my Little Book of the Icelanders by way of explanation:
The ingenious quota system
The Icelanders have an amazingly effective quota system.
No, it has nothing to do with fisheries management, though they do have an OK system for regulating fisheries, meaning they calculate how much of any given species of fish is swimming in the sea around Iceland and how much of it can be caught for the stock to remain sustainable. They then issue quotas on how much can be caught. This has spawned its own set of social injustice, mind you – but that, as they say, is another kettle of fish.
No – this quota system of which I speak is of an entirely different nature and concerns how long you can say hello to someone before you have to say hello to every single person you run into when you’re walking down the street.
Let’s say you meet someone in a bar, and you have a long, drunken conversation in which you go on about how your first husband/wife cheated on you, and how your kids are cooking crystal meth in the garage, and how you just had lip fillers because you must adhere to a certain beauty standard otherwise you won’t be taken seriously at work.
And then you run into them in IKEA a week later and you say “hi!” and “how are you?” (unless you went a tad too far in the disclosures, in which case you would hide inside the nearest kitchen display) and you have a little conversation. Then maybe you run into them a month later on Laugavegur, and you say “hi!” and “how’s it going?” and your conversation is a little briefer. And as time goes on, every time you run into them the hi’s get a little less enthusiastic, until they’re maybe down to just a nod. And then one day you run into that person on the street [or the gym, as the case may be] and they just look right through you.
And that will be because the quota has lapsed.
Pretty ingenious, right?
In my experience, a typical quota lasts for around 18 months. Maybe two years, depending on circumstances. After that, you’re back to being strangers.
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