Here’s an easy trick for making someone feel like an asshole.
When they hold the door open for you, don’t put your hand up to catch it. Instead, walk right into it with your arms dangling uselessly at your sides and then huff, “Thanks!”
They’ll feel terrible for letting the door slam on you, and make a note to show some manners in the future. They won’t realize that it slammed on you because you were pretending you had no arms.
Unless that person is me. I’m on to you! Guess what: I hold the door open for just the right amount of time, and if it slams on you, then it’s because you didn’t hold up your end of the social bargain, which is to catch the door.
If you’re carrying groceries in both hands, wheeling a stroller, using a wheelchair, carrying a tray of coffees or really have no arms, then I’m glad to hold it open the whole time you’re going through, and go in behind you. But if you’re unencumbered by nothing other than a combo of hostility and entitlement, be my guest and help yourself to a face full of swinging door.
Love ya!
Now you.
Do you do this? Do people do it to you, and have you noticed that it’s THEIR fault?
What else is getting on your nerves today?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS
My brother treats me like I am the bad guy and I did something wrong towards him
Laughing! “Your end of the social bargain.”
You know what pisses me off? When people get in the elevator, and you’re the only two, and they act like YOU’RE NOT EVEN THERE. Not even the slightest bit of eye contact. It’s like, look bitch, I could care less about your Gucci purse. Are you human in there?
I do care about the Gucci purse. I’d like to break the weird silence by saying, “How much did that purse cost?” And then, as soon as she starts saying, “Not that much, I got it at a consignment store, at like a fraction of the BLAH BLAH BLAH” pretend I’m the only one in the elevator and not respond at all.
Yes! People seem to feel entitled to walk through the door when I expect them to catch it. Their arms don’t work. And what about holding elevator doors open for people, while balancing on one foot, with your arms full of packages and one finger on the open-door button, waiting, waiting as they shuffle over ever so slowly.
The elevator thing is the worst!
Isn’t it nice that you don’t have to use it at rush hour anymore? God, I remember going to school, being already late, and enduring the elevator’s stops on every. Single. Floor.
I have issues with doors. Anytime that there are double doors and one of them is locked and one not, I always pick the one that’s locked. 100% of the time, guaranteed. And if I have to unlock a door with a key, I always turn the key the wrong direction the first time, unless it’s my own front door and then it’s 50/50. So if you hold a door open for me, I will automatically assume that something bad is about to happen. I may look for a second door and try it first (probably it’s locked, but you never know) or I may just turn and walk away, pretending that I was really going somewhere else even though there’s not another building within half a mile. If doors are a metaphor for life’s opportunities, I am totally screwed and I don’t need your door holding tricks to prove it.
I always do it wrong, too, Sam. And I never see the sign that says PUSH, or PULL, or PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR.
What I do notice lately, much more than in the past, is people in revolving doors who expect everyone else to do the pushing of the glass in front and behind them so that they do not have to expend any effort whatsoever. What is your remedy for that? Sure, one could simply do the same, but that doesn’t stop the door, which would be great. And what if you’re in a hurry?
The answer is both the same – push hard and walk fast. The laggards who aren’t pushing will be whacked unexpectedly from behind and in their haste to catch up may even miss the exit.
That is hysterical!
Bruce, do you think it’s the Millennials? I do. That’s what I think anytime people don’t know how to use something that’s been around for at least hundreds of years. Unless it’s fire, which I’m really bad at. Not a generational thing, just personal, between me and fire.