The impudent art of cutting the line

After leaving the courts—that modern cathedral where the citizen atones for bureaucratic obligations—I stopped at a café. As I approached the counter, the young barista, slim, alert, wearing a black cap, asked me to wait while she finished a previous order. I thanked her and sat in front of the bar, following the ritual of waiting my turn.

It was then that he entered.

He didn't walk in, he burst in, like someone who has never stood in line in his life. He wore a light gray jacket, an unbuttoned white jersey, comfortable pants, and a carefully rebellious gray mane. Under his thick black eyebrows, his blue eyes seemed to demand privilege. A black mustache, in the style of Mauricio Garcés, completed the character: an autumnal heartthrob from another time, convinced that life is meant to please him.

The barista, with unusual firmness, told him that I was first. The man smiled, as if tolerating a minor anecdote condescendingly, and remained standing in front of the counter. The girl asked for my order, but I hadn't finished saying the word cake when the middle-aged hipster had already stretched out his arm, taken a package of cookies, left a bill on the counter, and declared: "keep it like that." He left with barely contained satisfaction, without looking at anyone. As if he were taking a trophy.

Weeks earlier, a libertarian told me that a friend of his, a chemist, had managed to place a hair gel in Walmart. Shortly after, a competitor paid to have their products hide it on the shelves. The chemist's sales plummeted. When I noted that this practice was illegal, a veteran businessman interjected: "It's not illegal. It's being smart. That's business."

Both scenes—the café and the shelf—not only show the same behavior: they justify it. We live in times where cunning has replaced ethics, and brazenness is celebrated as a virtue. Merit and respect for the rules no longer matter, but the ability to slip through and take what others expect to deserve, whether it's cookies, a position on a shelf, or the freedom of expression of Mexicans: the only difference between the cookie king and Claudia Sheinbaum is the size of their audacity.

Meanwhile, we continue: applauding the cleverest, admiring the most shameless, resigned to the fact that here the most just doesn't prosper, but the one who takes the cookies before the others.