March 18th, 2008
Why do stores keep one door locked?
By Matthew Blackett // 29 Comments
One of my greatest pet peeves is when retail stores have one door open and keep the other door closed and locked. Since my employment experience has always been in an office (except for those regrettable teenage years working at Canada's Wonderland) I have never understood this rationale. Isn't it a fire code violation? Do store employees enjoy watching people smack themselves into locked glass doors?
So, this is a question I pose to our readers: Why do stores keep one door locked?
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Neither the author nor Spacing necessarily agree with the comments posted below. Spacing reserves the right to edit or delete comments entirely. See our Comment Policy.
I HATE that as well.
Laziness.
It also makes people feel dumb, when both doors are closed and you pull the wrong one. I've walked away from stores because of this. Might have been better to open the other door and shout in why I was leaving though.
One guess might be that they are trying to conserve energy by only allowing a limited opening through which warm air (or cool air in the summer) can escape.
Does it bother me? Well, not anymore. When I moved to Canada I was surprised at just how many doors there were everywhere, and how many of them were locked most of the time. E.g., my high school had at least ten entrances, but most of them were completely useless since they were almost always locked. Now I'm just used to it.
My office building does the same. Katie has a good point, but my office building - who knows. I feel like a moron every time I pull on the locked door. Reminds me of that Gary Larson Comic: http://www.giftsforlearning.com/images/midvale.gif
Pretty sure it's to foil would be robbers. Same rationale for those sneaky doors that look like you should push them, but you have to pull instead.
In an office context, might be to minimize the ole' maintenance costs.
It's laziness. In standard commercial doors, one door is locked with a set of pins at the top and bottom, while the other locks with a normal turning knob. The knob is easier to unlock, and therefore it's the only one that gets unlocked.
It bugs me enough that I've taken to unlocking the second door. Usually there's a latch on the side of the door that just needs to be flipped. I take comfort in knowing how many people after me I've saved the frustration of trying the wrong door.
Ah, the dreaded idiot door....
Don't know if this is a partial explanation, but some of the doors have a lock-plate on the "working" one which sits on top of the locked one. If both doors opened then there'd be instances where the lock-plate closes first propping open the usually locked door. The very least some places could do is put up a sign saying which door to use and in some cases whether to push or pull!
My guess is to avoid injuries, which means lawsuits to store owners.
If someone is pushing the door open to leave the store, it might smack into the person who is using the other door to enter.
It reminds of living in Poland in the early 1990s. Eight doors across the grand entrance to the school and just one open. Now I find the same here at the Metro Central YMCA ... at least for the winter.
I think it's laziness and sometimes if I feel very militant I complain and say I will be reporting them to the Fire Department. (Of course I don;t do this.) I have been told that width of exit doors (when both are opened) is set in the fire code so it reallyt IS illegal not to open both.
Well Its actually NOT a fire code violation.
many stores do this, I have worked in retail for 10 years, most of the places i worked did this,
Some reasons are,
-Theft prevention (makes it more awkward to exit)
-Air flow control (stops a breeze from coming in)
-Some Stores use it as a "Poster" window
-And...Sometimes the door is broke and the management is too cheep to get it fixed.
why does my building want me to use the revolving door? people use the swing glass door anyhow. right beside it. why have those 2 doors? i'm sure there's a reason. haven't figured it out, though.
Theft prevention is a good reason. The Dominion store at College Park relocated one of its exits because it was too easy to go out without passing a pinch point or constricted passage. It was easy for people to go from the meat department north to the escalators in a near straight line.
I should imagine "shrinkage" caused the exit's repositioning.
For revolving doors, I think they want you to use them because they don't open up a direct path for air to blow in or out, which puts extra load on the heating/air conditioning. (The swinging door is there for people in wheelchairs, deliveries, etc.)
My apartment building has a double front door with one side permanently closed. Worse, the closed side is closest to the dominant traffic flow, so everyone grabs it first. Maybe it's a security feature so we can tell who the non-residents are...
What I don't get is why anybody would feel stupid or like an "idiot" for trying to open a door which is locked in an un-obvious way. Sure it's a little frustrating, but I don't feel stupid. Nothing a little tutting and clicking can't remedy!
This is the dumbest posting of the year. Go back to closing the magazine, Matt.
People who don't use the revolving door in my building (aka almost everyone) drive me a bit nuts... Canadians always claim to be concerned about the environment but so many don't make even the smallest effort in their day-to-day lives.
Years ago, I recall reading an article that referred to the one-door-locked thing as something very "Toronto".
My work in the past decade has taken me to quite a variety of places around the world and my experience has been that this is generally true. This means that there are instances in other cities of one-door-locked, and there are instances in Toronto where both doors are open, but generally speaking you are more likely to find one door locked if you are in the GTA.
All the reasons cited in comments about why one door might be left locked, but none explain just why this is so much more prevalent here.
Ha! Everybody here is dumb too, since they're interested in this minutia of City Life.
Follow joe clark's weblink to his blog and see a non-dumb post about a guy with a bloody head. Of course, no comments allowed, so we can't tell him it isn't the dumbest post of the year.
That said, I hate this locked door thing.
Dumbest comment of the year.
Not only does that Clark guy insult Matt, he insults everyone else who took the time to think about this and make thoughtful comments.
Go back to closing your mouth.
God, Joe Clark, isn't there some typography somewhere for you to dully pontificate on?
ah, Joe Clark, another gem from you... bleah
Matt, disregard the guy, he's just bitter
While not a store, York U has the worst addiction to locked doors I've ever encountered. Some doors to the outside are permanently locked it seems, while others take rotating shifts day by day so no one knows which are locked until they try them and realize they've been Yorked again.
If I was pulling unluckily, I could walk through the campus and have maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the doors I touch entering or exiting buildings be locked.
wow, I thought I was alone....the braindead little
teens working behind the counters never know why the door is locked...I often ask why...but they never know.
I eventually figured it had to do with laziness/unwillingness to spend an extra 15 seconds locking up the side locks...you will notice the type of store where this happens, tends to have slackjawed f*cktard morons working there (hence the GTA link to the phenomenon)
amazing post, stores/shops that leave one locked and one open should be boycotted!
what i really don't understand is why this doesnt piss off more people...it _really_ pisses me off
One door must be locked in order for the magnetic door lock (switch is behind counter cashier to operate) to work. The purpose of this is safety which is more important than preventing people from getting pissed off because they dont know why it's locked. When there is a sign on the door saying 'please use other door' people dont notice the sign until after they have already tried to open the door... I know from years of experience. Depending on the type of establishment, usually during daytime hours, it is unnecessary to have one door locked as the steady traffic poses less of a threat. Evening and night, however, one door should always be locked. So now that you people know this you dont have to get pissed off and be rude to the people working in the store. (we just laugh at you after you leave anyways)
I didn't notice this until I moved to Kentucky from Wisconsin. Several times, until I got used to the idea of them leaving one door locked, I almost broke my wrist - or my nose.
I would think it is a fire hazard when the door opens to the inside. If there were a fire and many people trying to get out, you couldn't open the door because there are too many people in the way.
It's aggravating - I just say that it's a Kentucky thing.
My guess would be a form of "crowd control" and to control the flow of people coming in and out to prevent theft or whatever. Then, one may ask, "why have two doors?" And that would probably be to move products inside the store easier.
But I've only worked at stores that have one door so I'm just guessing.
Comment by katie
March 18, 2008 | 11:24 am