simont | (no subject)

The room I work in is accessed through a pair of double doors.

Whenever I am approaching the doors from one direction and someone else is approaching it from the other, what almost invariably happens is that whoever gets there first opens one of the doors, then either stops and holds it for the other person to go through, or holds it for the other person after they've gone through. Always, there is a politeness-door-holding moment, and someone stops and waits until the other person has gone through whichever door was opened. This is exactly identical to what would have happened if there had only been a single door.

But there isn't only a single door. These are double doors, the whole point of which (you would think) is that the opening is wide enough for two people to go through simultaneously without getting in each other's way.

What's with this? Holding the door is utterly instinctive in this circumstance – once or twice I've deliberately ignored the other person and opened the other door so we can both go through without either of us having to stop and wait, and it felt horribly unnatural and rude.

I suppose it's vaguely possible that the effort of pulling a heavy door open might be deemed worse than the delay of waiting for someone else to go through, so that having both people go through the same door works out more efficient; but in that case, why build the double doors in the first place if they were never going to be used?

It's weird. Someone has wasted a lot of time and effort, but I can't work out whether it's the people who built the double doors or the people who keep stopping and waiting for each other when it's unnecessary.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Double doors in case you have to move something big (like furniture and desks and stuff) through them?

This seems to be the common suggestion, but since the corridor outside isn't as wide as the doors, I think any big furniture would have to be broken down to get to the room in the first place, so that doesn't seem likely to me.

Perhaps double doors were just needed for the symmetry of the room? In any case, they are good for anything which is a bit bigger than single door size, but still small enough to fit in the corridor.

Interestingly, this doesn't happen here with the set of double doors here between the Blue Bridge and the Arup 3 corridor. They're a bit odd, though, in that they open both ways, and they're oblique to the traffic flow, like this:

       -----------
       |
--------++--------
          |
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As such, everyone just pushes the door on their left, because it's so much more convenient than doing anything else. The only trickiness is to avoid clouting anyone with the door when you let go of it.

Incidentally, there are still uses for double doors, such as moving furniture, and having a group of very serious people in dark glasses stride in in parallel.

Hi Simon, only just found you had an LJ.

As for the door thing, probably years of social programming about what's polite & right to do makes it very hard for people not to stop & hold it open. Also, like you said, laziness probably plays a little part too ;-)

Um, hello. Sorry, should I know you? One of your userpics rings a vague bell, and you clearly know a lot of people I've heard of, but I'm afraid I can't place you exactly.

(I'm usually pretty good at remembering people, so if this turns out to be an unforgivable lapse on my part then be assured I will kick myself for a week.)

Ack, that's the second time that's happened lately..

If you are Simon T then I have met you several times, including Laura's Halloween party last year, Dr. D's b'day party & at the pub. Unless there are two Simon Ts (which there may well be).

Hmm. No, I think this must be a case of mistaken identity. The only Laura I know has never invited me to a party as far as I can remember, and certainly not a Halloween one last year. I'm sure there are more Simon Ts around than just me. Sorry...

Hehe, that's ok. My mistake - what's quite weird is you actually look a lot like that guy too ;-)

Since I got Broadband I've tried to locate people I know's LJs - it's mostly worked but got you (& a girl I thought was someone else from Bicon & pub) mixed up (Blush)

You're mistaking him for

barkingwatcher, I believe.
They don't really look very alike in real life apart from reddish-blondish hair and wearing glasses.

Er, that seems to be

barking_watcher with an underscore...

Aha, that makes more sense now. Silly me ;-)

I think it's because in the case that the door which wasn't being held open was locked, it would be very embarrassing to try to open it and not succeed in front of the whole office, so in general people will go through the door that they already know to be unlocked (i.e. because someone else just opened it) just in case. Even when it's very obvious that both doors are unlocked, people still do it unconsciously, because it's learned from situations in which one was locked and they did try to walk through it and get embarrassed.

Perhaps whoever designed that bit of the building thought it would be good for your souls to give you the chance to choose to be polite instead of being efficient :)

As far as I can tell, there is enough space for people to go through two abreast, but generally only one person will open a door at a time to avoid smacking the other person in the face with the door, or indeed being the smackee.

It would be interesting to see how people behaved if they were both hinged to open clockwise or anticlockwise.

At my schools (both of them, not counting primary) you were required to hold open doors for teachers. It became a simple way of acknowledging someone elese in the corridor, so the pupils held open the doors for one another.

It's something I've carried into later life. I wouldn't be able to shake it if I tried.

I think I see the risk that you might wallop a sligtly misaligned other person round the lughole as too great. I don't know 'why double doors' except that (non-domestic) corridors tend to be double-door wide, so that people can pass, and it would look silly, and probably be expensive, to build a little wall with a single door in.

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