I remember checking into a nice hotel before our business flight out of Dallas-Fort Worth. As I reentered the hotel through a side entrance (closer to the elevators) carrying several large and heavy bags, there were several yuppies with cell phones glued to their heads yapping away and completely oblivious to their surroundings. (They must have been on a break from whatever conference was occurring at the hotel because the hallway was the conference room hallway.) I said excuse me two times with each time raising my voice, but still remained polite.
I did not say excuse me a third time. I think I did a 7-10 split with them.
Hows this for bad traffic planning. First, put the break area, fridge, microwave, restroom, and locker room all in one corner. Second, realize you don’t have enough installed lockers and set up a row of lockers out in the space. Third, set it up about five feet away from the nearest wall, thus creating a 30-40 foot narrow hallway that everyone has to use to get to the fridge, microwave, restrooms, or lockers. Then, to spice it all up, put various notice/bulletin boards along the wall facing the lockers.
Thus, this entire corridor is full of people gawking at the bulletin boards, shuffling stuff in/out of their lockers, trying to carry a bunch of stuff to/from their lockers, waiting with food to put in the microwave, eating food they just got out of the microwave, and then all the people that were looking for the people with legitimate reasons for being there whom are now all just chatting back and forth.
I’ll say “excuse me” as a prompt for someone to move if theres no longer enough space for me to actually walk down the passage, but for the most part just try to get through without bumping into or rubbing on anyone too much.
If they’re not significantly higher on the food chain, I’ll either whistle very loudly as I walk through (usually the theme from “Patton”), or mumble to myself just loud enough to be heard - usually the type of stuff that Milton mumbled in “Office Space” - “and if they take my stapler, I’ll set, I’ll set the building on fire.” Just something to interrupt their conversation enough to let them know they’re in the way.
