That's not the only incident of inane situations due to blind adherence to union rules that I saw, just the most egregious. Even among union workers the rules were sometimes unpalatable like the strict seniority rules that make it impossible to hire the best person for the job since the most senior person gets his/her pick of new jobs -- they supported the rules only because they knew that one day they would be the senior one.

I don't think "losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally" is a fair analogy, more like "losing respect for all Chinese because they not only follow arbitrary and counter-productive rules, but they actively support them and will fight to keep them"