CHAOS BEFORE PREDICTABILITY

Every day, we look at automatic doors like they owe us something. We stand and stare, wondering what’s taking them so long to open. After all, we’ve got places to be and they’re standing right in our way. But have you ever considered the doors’ feelings for a moment?

There they stand, every day, under the illusion of being automatic, but they have no free will. Cursed to remain closed until a passer-by wishes to pass through them without giving a second thought to the door, its story or even how shiny it’s looking today. They constantly open their arms to us, revealing an emptiness that people merely pass through, day in day out.

Ever since the first automated door as we know it was created around the 50s, this neglect has taken its toll. Shopping centres, supermarkets, offices and leisure facilities around the globe now house the saddest of beings. If we’re not careful, we’ll be faced with automatic door depression of epidemic proportion. People will be unable to get in or out of buildings – able to see the good on the other side, but never get to them.

What we’ll end with is more and more occurrences like the man who fatefully had to exit one such sad door using his head. Literally his head. So maybe we should, just once, ask the doors how their day is going, before it’s too late to get into Lidls.

Goodbye, happy shopper
I love to see you go.
Perhaps you’ll speak to me
When I open again tomorrow.