A little "pushy" problem

[Kip Powick]

With two just recently engaged, and one married, we find ourselves almost doubling our Christmas shopping lists and thus it is I am forced to accompany Scuba02 on many a sojourn to various shops and malls. I really don’t mind as we just agree to meet at a specific time at the “Food Court” ( the walkie-talkies I incorporated and had envisioned utilizing all the time didn’t go over very well when I “buzzed” her while she was in a lingerie store and, she unfortunately had the volume full up when I stated that I had found a suitable gift for “your ugly Aunt”), thus I normally go to a book store and browse…(insert- read free), some of the more entertaining books.

There is one thing that is starting to really annoy me now and that has to do with some of the doors that are in some of the stores we frequent. I am sure you have all seen the door with the yellow oval sign smack dab in the middle of the door that has the following words emblazoned on it.

CAUTION – AUTOMATIC DOOR

I don’t know about you, but to me an automatic door is one that opens for you as you approach the door, normally activated by an overhead electronic motion sensor. I can understand a sign on them as one might lose their balance when walking forward with the intention of grabbing the door and pushing outward.

The doors in question have that ominous yellow and black decal and are NOT automatic doors, they are merely doors that will open if the infirm, or handicapped, push the round knob that has the handicapped symbol on it.

After doing a couple of ungainly face plants into these “Caution Automatic Door” (s),(I’m a slow learner---ask anyone). I now know that an able bodied person has to push the door open like any other ordinary door.

Living in Smallville makes it very easy to pretty much know most of the store proprietors so I asked a couple .”Why the sign?” They had no real answer other than …”that’s the way they were installed.”

I suppose we could debate the meaning of “automatic” until the cows come home but it would be much like trying to get a definitive answer to thaw vs. unthaw, inflammable and flammable so why bother……but it still annoys me….. Have a nice weekend.

[Check Pilot]

Kip,

There are is a solution to your dilemma regarding the Automatic Doors.

I don't go to those kind of places any more. Wife B knows that I'll just be more trouble than she is willing to put up with and she just leaves me at home or I drop her off on the way to RONA or Home Depot. The best thing to do is wait until about 21:00 on December 24th and do all your Christmas shopping at either the 7-11, Mac's store or Shoppers Drug Mart.

Some of them do have those automatic doors but it's not in some noisy mall filled with the odor of transfatty engorged food that either makes me hungry or nauseous and overweight people, pushing me around and teen-aged pukes that swear too much. At least the doors aren't in constant use at that time of the year and I can just ignore it and open it normally by pulling on the door handle to open it. The only people in those stores that time of day is a few other folks doing the same thing as I am doing.

As an aside, just a note to newly-weds here.

Before wife B and I got married, I took her down and got her spayed. That saved the whole doubling of the shopping list by unwanted means.

[moeman]

Hey Kip,

Have you ever seen any of the Star Trek bloopers where the futuristic automatic sliding doors malfunction and Spock or Kirk ram head-first into them mid-sentence? Funny stuff. Perhaps prophetic, but funny nonetheless.

[Guest woxof]

And what about when they have two doors to go through but they keep one locked. Why do they do that?

[QFE]

Compared to a person in a wheelchair facing a door that dosen't have an automatic opening device this really is a "teeny weeny" problem.