Common space in Finland and Italy

The office is very clean, and the colour range is on the white and grey. There are windows all over the side of the office space, and a coffee/lunch room that is spacious, with very nicely Nordic design interiors, fridges, coffee and tea, dishwashers and newspapers.  It looks somewhat healthy. Coming from Italy, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact differences between the offices that you find in the two countries, but the feeling you get when entering a room is different; in Finland there is a cure and dedication for detail and for making the environment as clean, untouched, and respectful as possible.

Common space in Finland shows the respect that people have for each other. What I mean with this is that when you walk into a room, which is used by many people, you can measure the amount of respect that the people have for each other by looking at the room, and noticing small as well as big details. Are there stains, is there clutter, is it messy? Are there cups left somewhere? Is the environment comfortable or degrading? It’s as easy as cleaning up after yourself, but not everyone does it in the same measure.

At least in Italy you can perceive from the spaces that people don’t respect common property as much as they do in Finland, possibly because they don’t respect other people as much as Finns do. I wouldn’t make this about “blood” or “genetics”, as a lot of people like to do. People like to blame their faults on something that they cannot control. It is a much more difficult subject, with many different sides to look at. A big part of it is the education. People are educated differently on how to treat others and on how to handle common property. In Italy, as some say, one way to approach the other is “I eat you, before you eat me”, which makes things difficult, as one can probably notice.