A question of etiquette
I may have spoken about this at one point or another, but this whole thing about holding doors open for people needs to be re-examined by society as a whole. While anyone with a brain can understand that a person carrying a bunch of stuff should have a door held open for them out of courtesy, the rest needs, again, re-examination.
If you are exitting or entering a building and there are people approaching the door, man or woman, we've always been told to hold the door open for them (at least I have. Maybe it wasn't so much that it's what I was told as it was just one of those things I figured out at some point along the way). I find myself thinking about distance. If you hold the door open for someone, and they are a certain length away, I tend to see them speed up, sometimes even a light jog, to hurry themselves up, like they are forcing you to hold the door open, and they feel horrible about it. It's a guilt jog. So you're holding the door open, and the oncoming person starts to hurry towards you, they thank you, and you go along your way, while they stay and do the same thing for the next schmuck who was 30 feet behind him.
I propose this, as it is a rule of thumb I live by. I won't hold the door open if it would close by itself before the other person reaches it. Most doors would automatically close due to some hydraulic system in the hinges, but they would close slowly, as to make sure that they didn't hurt anyone. The ones that do hurt people are enjoyable in a completely different and sadistic sort of way, but I digress. If the door would close itself before the other person got there, let it close. If it's going to close half-way on someone, yeah I'll take the 3 seconds it takes to hold the door, because that's all it should take.
Must cook rice. Begone with me.
If you are exitting or entering a building and there are people approaching the door, man or woman, we've always been told to hold the door open for them (at least I have. Maybe it wasn't so much that it's what I was told as it was just one of those things I figured out at some point along the way). I find myself thinking about distance. If you hold the door open for someone, and they are a certain length away, I tend to see them speed up, sometimes even a light jog, to hurry themselves up, like they are forcing you to hold the door open, and they feel horrible about it. It's a guilt jog. So you're holding the door open, and the oncoming person starts to hurry towards you, they thank you, and you go along your way, while they stay and do the same thing for the next schmuck who was 30 feet behind him.
I propose this, as it is a rule of thumb I live by. I won't hold the door open if it would close by itself before the other person reaches it. Most doors would automatically close due to some hydraulic system in the hinges, but they would close slowly, as to make sure that they didn't hurt anyone. The ones that do hurt people are enjoyable in a completely different and sadistic sort of way, but I digress. If the door would close itself before the other person got there, let it close. If it's going to close half-way on someone, yeah I'll take the 3 seconds it takes to hold the door, because that's all it should take.
Must cook rice. Begone with me.