Keeper of the Waste Log

HQSR (Keeper of the Waste Log) types are unmatched in their loyalty to the thing called a rule. At 2 a.m. on the first day of the lockdown, you stand before the shelf of sandwiches that have just hit their sell-by time. And you discard them. Even with the world ending, an expiry is an expiry.

The others protest furiously, of course. "That's food!" "It's an emergency!" You answer quietly: "It's precisely because it's an emergency that the risk of food poisoning is unacceptable." The terrifying thing is that this claim is completely correct. Correctness and everyone's feelings live in different places.

Upholds the rules

HQSR's worth is proven from day 20 onward. As hygiene collapses and several people who reached for expired deli food fall ill one after another, your managed "in-date food zone" is the only place with not a single case of food poisoning. Everyone had to admit it: the keeper was right. Infuriating, but right.

Upholds only the rules

But your correctness has no exit. In the final stretch, with food nearly gone, a stack sits in front of you: "retort curry, three days past its date, but completely fine in smell and appearance." Everyone ate it. Everyone was fine. Only you didn't eat. On day 18, before a mountain of food, you starved exactly as regulation prescribed. Your end was nobler than anyone's, and saved no one.