I have a habit of judging people. It’s not a habit that I’m proud of and I certainly shouldn’t be judging anyone on cursory observations, but it’s just something I do and I keep to myself. Except when I write about it in my blog of course.
For instance, consider the people that work in the same building as I do.
We have three doors at the main entrance of our building. In the middle is large, revolving door which is flanked by two standard doors. The revolving door is the “old kind” in that a little effort must be given in order to actually push the door to make it revolve so that you’re not stuck in the middle part looking like a window display on Fifth Avenue.
Quick side note: believe it or not, I’ve seen people push the door a little bit expecting it to start moving on its own and after a few moments do realize that something is wrong once they’re stuck between the inside and outside between two panels of the door. They finally figure out that a little effort is required and starting pushing the door, which contradicts my theory that…
… People that don’t use the revolving door are dumb, people that do use the revolving door are smart.
There’s a couple of reasons the revolving door is there. First of all, it gives the appearance of a classy building. Important places have revolving doors. “There’s no common door to our building, we’re too good for that, we have a fancy revolving door.”
Secondly, revolving doors keep the outside air on the outside and the inside air on the inside. At a place such as the Carrier Dome, which is somewhat pressurized, this is important so that the roof doesn’t come crashing down on 60,000 football spectactors. In a building such as the office building I work at, it helps keep the temperature in the lobby under control; in the winter the warm air stays in and the cold air stays out. Using the standard doors on either side defeats any attempt at a happy environment in the building lobby. “Boy, I wish the landlord would heat this lobby!”, clueless people think.
The other day when it was extremely windy outside, I heard a woman complain that the standard door was hard to push open to get out of the building because the wind was holding it shut. She really felt that the landlord should build a vestibule of some sort so that the entrance of the building was protected from the wind. I bit my tongue to refrain from pointing out a couple of things to her; the entrance of the building is inset into the rest of the building by about 15 feet, creating an outside vestibule to protect those coming and going by the elements until they can get appropriate raingear or whatever on.
Secondly, the revolving door works just fine in windy conditions because that’s what it’s designed for.
So at quitting time when the offices in our building are emptying out and people are pushing those standard doors open and complaining about the cold air blowing in, I’m going to continue to bite my tongue and refrain from telling them that they should be using the revolving door. But I’ll continue to think that they’re a little dumb, stumbling through life without a clue as to what is going on around them.
I’ll save my theories on elevator etiquette for another time.
