It Works This Way, See...

I work at a lady's shoe store. Said store is located in a charming historic city which, naturally, attracts gaggles of tourists, who travel in groups of at least five at all times and must (simply must) walk all of them abreast along the potentially ample sidewalk so as to hamper pedestrian traffic, and they always look either up at the tops of buildings or down at the tour maps in their hands, so it strikes me that they miss a lot more of the city than they see of it.

The aforementioned shoe store has an entrance - as I imagine do most shoppable shoe stores - that looks a lot like a large pane of glass in a wooden frame and with a door handle. When you attempt to enter the store from the outside, you must pull (not push) the handle, and the door will yield. I can't explain it - that is simply the way it is.

I must add that this is a double door, one side of which we keep locked for whatever purpose. Therefore I feel it must be admitted that only one half of the door is an entryway, and the other half is a lie. It often confuses customers, especially the ones who reach first for the handle to the door that doesn't open. But humans are rational, and after yanking once or twice with no results they almost always realize that only brute force will open it, and almost always eagerly reach for its neighboring handle, sure of success, and are almost always right.

I say "almost always" because this past Saturday I witnessed a situation that shook my faith in mankind.

I stood at the rear of the store behind the cash wrap counter. My part-timer Denise stocked shoes along a nearby wall. A woman approached from the outside and tried to open the locked door.

It didn't open.

I had glanced up at hearing it but this happens so frequently I rarely acknowledge these cases anymore. I resumed whatever task I was doing.

She tried again on the same door. Oh my, it was still locked. Imagine, its still being locked! I paid no heed. She would figure it out soon enough.

Again, she jerked hard on the same unyielding door. And then again. And again. By now the noise had really begun to intrigue both Denise and myself. We looked up to see the woman throwing her hands up in exasperation and giving us some nasty looks as if to say, "WHAT THE HECK IS YOUR PROBLEM WHY CAN'T I COME IN?!"

Denise made a few emphatic arm gestures and mouthed the words "other door" in an attempt to communicate with the estranged creature.

At this the lady finally grasped the other door handle. Phew, I thought. It's over.

She gave it a not-even-half-hearted tug, so the fact was not readily apparent to her that it would have opened had she really tried. I suppose she assumed that this door was also locked, and would believe nothing else. Another dirty look shot in our direction. I couldn't believe it. This woman was attempting to open the unlocked door and was failing.

By now several other customers were staring curiously at the scene, a few onlookers seemed as if they wanted to help communicate but were too amused to do anything about it, Denise was still motioning frantically to the distressed person locked outside - as it were - and I was shaking with mirth but couldn't laugh, for the sake of professionalism.

At this point a man who happened to be in the store at the time, and who found this situation as unbelievable as I did, walked briskly to the door and effortlessly swung it open.
"THIS door." was all he said.

I think what I took away from all this is that I should never expect too much of anyone.