When traveling in America, you travel on the right.
You drive on the right side of the road, if you are walking at someone you move over to your right. When approaching a double door, you should use the right door.
For the most part, I feel that people follow these ‘rules’. At least they do until you factor in laziness.
I cannot even begin to count all the times that the door on my right will be propped open and the one on the left will be shut. As I approach the open door, someone from inside the building will be coming out. Upon seeing one of the doors already open they decide that they can not muster up the enormous amount of energy to open the closed door and instead go for the open door to their left.
The two people arrive at the door at the same time, each doing a stutter step as you try and figure out who is going first. Then you both decide that they will be the one going first, and then two grown people try and squeeze through the door in some awkward sucking-it-in shuffle. The problem is it is impossible to suck in a backpack.
All this is happening while a perfectly operational door sits unopened. Not to mention the fact that once people see someone divert to the open door to their left, they for whatever reason feel inclined to also do so. Apparently laziness is like yawning; addictive and annoying.
I feel quite positive in assuming that the vast majority of people know exactly what I am referring to. It would be one thing if someone had their hands full and they opted for the open door. That would be completely understandable. Doing so out of pure laziness is ridiculous, not to mention sad.
It is only a matter of time before our technological crazed culture replaces such ‘hassles’ as opening doors with automated doors. Until that time comes though, I beg of you, please do not be that person. Be the person who would rather take two seconds to open a door instead of taking 15 seconds to compete with other people for the open door. n