Circular Cruises/No Exit

No Exit

18 November 1997

I was going to call this entry In and Out, but I thought people would assume it was about the Kevin Kline movie (which is excellent). So instead I went for the Jean-Paul Sartre joke.

This is about doors.

Specifically, it's about entrances which have a pair of doors where everyone nonetheless goes through only a single door.

If this doesn't make sense to you then you're obviously part of the 95% of the population that doesn't understand why this bothers me so.

I was taught to exit on the right, as I assumed all civilized humans were (except for the ones in England and Japan). This means that if there are two doors, I will open the right-hand one and exit through it.

I will do this even if the left-hand door has been propped open (as it frequently is) if there are other people travelling through the same doorway at the time. The only time I will walk out through the left-hand door is if there are no other people around ... in which case even I admit that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

But in cases where people are constantly flowing in both directions through the doorway, it does make a difference. In New England, where people are rude in public (I've already done this topic, so I'll spare you), generally both directions of traffic will try to squeeze through one side, especially if that door already happens to be open.

New Englanders apparently hate opening doors. I have seen someone outside the building, trying to enter, open the door, and have not one but several people exit through it, blocking his efforts to enter. If you have to open the door, so the apparent theory goes, you lose the game and I get to shove through the doorway ahead of you.

Far better to just push open the right-hand door (everyone always seems to want to go through the left-hand one as you're exiting, the right-hand one as you're entering) and walk out. I have gotten puzzled looks when I do this! I have also gotten facial expressions which connote amazement, as if saying "Wow, I didn't know you could do that!"

I've also gotten reactions of annoyance, because when traffic is building up, trying to trickle through a single door, attempting to push open the other door frequently involves opening it in someone's face. In cases like that, I have to weigh whether it's worse to contribute to the traffic problem or shove people around on the sidewalk with a large hunk of metal and plate glass.

And I've ended up looking stupid on more than one occasion, as frequently I'll shove the unused door and find that it is locked. Not that the people giving me pitying looks knew it was locked, because they never try it. I have seen a line form, waiting to exit a building while a line is forming on the other side waiting to enter ... both directions funneled through one door ... and I've walked up to the other door, pushed it open, and walked out.

I am at a loss to explain this weirdness.

- - -

Another set of doorway weirdness involves revolving doors. Revolving doors are not something I saw in Louisiana much, but a lot of places here have them - particularly places, like banks and hotels, where there is rapid traffic through the lobby. I admit that I found them intimidating for the first two or three attempts, but I at least have the defense that I didn't encounter them on a regular basis until fairly late in my life. I am unsure why other people are reluctant to use them.

Nonetheless, the revolving doors at the Copley Place walkway (where the normal doors on either side are marked HANDICAPPED ACCESS ONLY and PLEASE USE REVOLVING DOOR) get used only about a third of the time. They might as well prop the other two doors open. And the infamous revolving doors at the MIT Medical Center are largely ignored, despite the huge green signs which seem to get more severe in their wording every year.

Admittedly the MIT building is badly planned. It is smack between the MIT subway exit and the main portion of the campus. You either have to cut across the lobby of the building for three seconds - in one door, then immediately out the other - or walk around either end of the building, adding five minutes or more to your trip. I make fun of the MIT impulse to take any shortcut available while walking (MIT students are especially bad about diagonals across large open patches of grass), but in this case I tend to find that I'm unwilling to do an end run around the building myself.

Nonetheless, it's no slower to use the revolving doors when crossing that lobby, and there isn't even the excuse of heavy traffic (like the Copley Place walkway sometimes has).

These aren't isolated cases. Everywhere I go in town, I see people who just won't use a revolving door by choice. Is there some intimidation factor I'm not seeing?

- - -

I was reading a book about French habits and weirdnesses for the traveller, which had some things to say about the French and doorways. Apparently there is a rigid social order about who goes through a doorway first, and there is a certain amount of political maneuvering involved ("I outrank him, but I'll let him go first because he already knows I outrank him and I'll seem more humble") which often amounts in a sort of stalemate outside a doorway, none of the parties willing to enter first.

As I recall, I set down the book in disgust at that point, and said something to myself along the lines of, "I'm never going to France. Life has too many stupid political struggles in it already without having to worry about pissing off someone just because you went through the door at the wrong time."

But, in retrospect, I think that it would be wrong for me to say that the French habits regarding doorways are any more bizarre than ours.

Besides, I'm told they're willing to grant American visitors a certain amount of doorway amnesty.

Copyright © November 1997. All rights reserved.