Well, the wait is finally over… actually since I am not sure who (if anyone) has been actually waiting on my posts, I will simply characterize it as the procrastination has ended. It is the symbolic 11th hour for a resolution I made to myself much earlier in 2007. That resolution was to find a way to capture all the observations that intrigue me from day to day. I tried traditional journaling, but that did not lend itself to quick updates while out and about unless I carried the journal with me and the number of paper scraps with random thoughts on it was becoming unmanageable. Then my brother alerted me to WordPress which was the most functional electronic journaling tool I have come across yet. So with his help we are here today and probably the most satisfying part is the successful completion of another New Year’s resolution….. and just in time as I start determining next year’s goals tomorrow!
I decided to start with the observation I consider the Tipping Point for this entire blog (actually I found Malcolm’s book on Blink even more fascinating, but T.P. had some very interesting topics including a compelling discussion on children shows). One day while standing outside the Associated Bank building in downtown Peoria, I noticed an individual approaching the entrance to the first floor bank lobby. For some reason, what caught my attention was the odd angle he was taking towards the door. That angle eventually took him directly to the left side of a glass double door. Typically in the US, ongoing traffic stays in the right lane and oncoming traffic traditionally flows on the left side. This is required in our vehicle traffic and mimicked in pedestrian flow – watch stairs in a high traffic area and you will see the natural tendency although it is rarely ever posted anywhere. Now I am very aware from my travels and interaction with locals that other countries have a reversed pattern. On my observation to-do list I have a task to verify how standard pedestrian traffic flows in these countries. My guess is this will be similar to the traffic flow on their roads. The subject of this particular observation did not appear to be from another country so that did not explain the vector he had taken.
Clearly, this is not extremely interesting in itself, but then the picture took on a new perspective. The individual ended up slamming into the door because it was actually locked. Somewhat stunned, the person shifted over to the door on the right and entered into the bank foyer. I’ll touch upon my opinion of the door being locked in just a minute, but the individual’s next move absolutely stunned me. This particular foyer had two sets of double doors. I expected him to continue moving forward through the door on the right side…. instead he actually moved over to the left door again…. and thanks to this door also being locked… slammed into the door again. Somewhat unphased, he slid to the right and entered into the lobby.
I pondered this event for a few minutes and decided the subject was first a victim of an inconsiderate act by the bank not unlocking the doors in the first place. Could there have been valid reasons for this – perhaps to help prevent robberies similar to a Jewel grocery store I worked at when I was going to high school – the automatic outdoor was strengthened with two metal bars in front of the glass and was purposely set to accommodate a standard walking pace. That setup resulted in a pretty violent impact when a shoplifter tried to run out the door (I had to walk a number of wobbly people to the office to wait for the police to arrive). But this was the outbound and did not inhibit or endanger the normal customer pattern. I was unable to identify any valid reason why the doors were locked, but did consider a number of drawbacks such as fire escape hazards or inhibiting rescue workers.
The intriguing part of all of this to me came down to a key component. The individual did not translate the short term memory of the first locked door to the second scenario not 2 seconds later. There was either a deeply embedded long term habit that overruled the recent short term experience or he was not able to take what appeared to be the exact same scenario and deduce a similar outcome. I desperately wanted to wait out whatever task he was there to do in order to complete this observation but I did not have the available time – would he try to go out the left side of the double door again, would he slow his pace to prevent a similar impact, what will happen when he comes upon a individual coming in the same doors he was leaving? intriguing indeed (at least to me and if you actually got this far in the post, you must have been somewhat interested or really really bored).
Looking forward to many more throughout the year (probably not all this long) and hope you enjoyed
Addendum: I was talking to my wife about this particular observation and assuming he was not from another country, she speculated that the individual may have been part of the food service industry – in particular, worked in a restaurant which has double doors into the kitchen that might have this type of traffic flow. As a follow-up I made a point to observe two local restaurants (one fairly high class, and the other more standard), but both of those had the standard traffic pattern that did not support this hypothesis. More observations are probably needed before dismissing this idea.
Life Intrigued 