You know what I am talking about–you push on one door of a pair to find that it is locked, although the other one is unlocked. Usually it seems to be the door on the right (as you go in) that is unlocked. Why do businesses do this? There must be a reason, but it makes me crazy.
Lazy?
We used to do it, at the carry out I worked at.
Basically, we had two doors in the front, and then our boss came in one morning to see one all busted apart. Odd, the store was broke into, beer was stolen, along with some food, but the alarm never went off. Turns out it was a relative of his, who had worked there in the past, who remembered the code to the alarm. He busted the door’s glass as well as frame.
The door people came that night while I was working. They pretty much told my boss that they would have to bolt it shut or replace both doors. He decided it was better it be bolted shut, at least one door would function, so it became that way. Now, almost 2 years later, it still is. No one seems to notice or mind that I know of.
Of course, lazy is a good answer as well…
Brendon
I would only ever do it unintentionally. Generally when an employee came to the door and I had to unlock one door for him right before opening time, and the phone was ringing and the UPS guy wanted a signature and I’d just get distracted behind the counter, customers would start walking in, and that told my subconscious that the door was open, no need to worry about it until close. As soon as I noticed it or someone said something, I’d unlock the other one, because it’s a pretty major fire code violation, in most places. (At least, that’s what our DM told us. I suspect he just wanted our store to be able to more quickly swallow the hordes of rampaging customers he was sure we had that would never buy anything if we didn’t use their name at checkout. :rolleyes: )
I’ve left one locked due to wind.
If the wind conditions are right, one of the doors won’t close. If the wind is really strong, the door can get pulled out of someone’s hand - sometimes violently.
Aren’t you concerned about possible lawsuits from some bozo who runs face-first into what appears to be an exit door? And you don’t have to be too stupid to fall for that because it certainly appears to be the exit side, seeing as how the other (unlocked) side is where everybody is entering.
I have absolutely no idea why I do that. My business has double doors, one is unlocked in the morning, the other has a pin to keep it closed.
The contractors set it up that way and I never given it a thought (until now). However, I think if I unlocked the other one, I would constantly be having to close that one also as patients can not seem to manage to close the door behind them.
Passive-aggressive security? The 50/50 chance that a thief will hit the wrong door while running out with swag and give security a chance to catch them?
VCNJ~
I know why my business does it, and it has nothing to do with laziness or “passive agressive security.” It’s a simple matter of traffic flow.
Both sides of the door have “panic bars” that open the door when they are pushed down, even if the doors are locked from the outside. When someone approaches the building, the door on the right is unlocked, and the door on the left is locked, forcing the foot traffic to use the right door for entry and leaving the left door for exiting.
It works out very well, and no one gets whacked with a door because of someone passing through the “wrong” side.
I was ticked one place I worked they didn’t unlock both doors. Many people were stalled when pulling on a locked door. I asked why and was told that one of the doors was broken and wouldn’t close on its own any more. So I tried to get them to at least put up a sign that said to use other door. They didn’t want to do that either.
Then I found out that* the door actually did work fine* if it were just unlatched at the bottom, but they were too lazy to open it. And they didn’t care if people pulled on it to no avail, because “They will try the other one and our regular customers know.” Of course this was wrong. People often forget that sort of thing.
But they also were stupid about other things like they refused to rotate stock. They would just leave dusty stock with old prices at the backs of the pegs and their regular customers would know to check back there for bargains.
Some people are just not good at being shopkeepers.
My god, how lazy do you have to be to not want to take an extra five seconds to unlock a door when you’re already unlocking the one next to it?!? :eek:
Wasn’t concerned about it until now. Something else to worry about 
The wind causes issues about once a month. Except for that unusual condition, both doors are open all the time.
We don’t have enough foot traffic to be concerned about exit vs entry doors. People manage to sort that out for themselves.
When I was a clerk at Cirlce K, we always locked the “out” door at night. We called it the Beer Door, and it prevented beer thefts a surprising number of times. Here’s a generic scenario:
Saturday night, four 14 year olds saunter in and scatter. One of them walks up to me and starts chatting about inane BS because he thinks I was born yesterday and don’t know that he’s trying to distract me. Next thing you know, two of the kids, twelve pack in each hand, tear down the aisle toward the door.
BAM off the glass of the beer door. They drop the beer in panic until they figure out that they have to pull the left-hand door to get out. Picture the Three Stooges or Keystone Kops as all four try to exit the door at the same time, sans beer.
It didn’t always happen this way; just often enough to be amusing.
A lot of time the wind is why. The door that catchs the wind when it’s blown nasty all day, gets locked or it stays wide open funneling the wind.
You should have seen the surprised people at a store I was about to leave after the power died a few minutes earlier. They were automatic doors and nobody new how to leave. I put my hand on the frame and give it a hard shove, and it swings open instead of the normal sild sideways, which is a fire safty feature required on the doors. The employees didn’t even know that the doors could do that. In a fire I guess I live and the rest burn, unless I’m there.
Amusing, yes-but in most places, also illegal. Commerical occupancies typically must have outswinging doors as a means of egress, and locking same while the store is open for business is a violation of fire/health & panic/life safety codes.
Good to know. This was a very common practice, at least when I lived in Oklahoma about 15 years ago.
I’ve worked where a temporaraly broken emergengy only door has resulted in the fire marshal odering that the EXIT sign be covered until the door was working again. You don’t want people during a fire to go to an exit sign, and find the exit impassable. The exits have to open outward so a pressing crowd doesn’t stop the door from being opened.
This is one of my big pet peeves. If you have two doors, unlock both of them. Especially in high traffic areas.
Store owners do this so that approximately half of their customers experience rejection as their first feeling when trying to bring their business there. Why in the world else?