I need a ruling . . . holding the door

I was surprised to have received quite a bit of feedback and conversation on my last “I need a ruling” segment. If you recall, that entry dealt with what to do when someone has a sneezing fit. Do you keep saying “Bless you” over and over and over? I continue to work on two strategies. One is to have a “two ‘Bless you’” limit, after which the sneezer is on his or her own. The other is to wait until the entire fit is over, then to give one “blanket ‘Bless you’” to cover all the sneezes in the series. I’m not sure which one I like better. I continue to experiment.

Meanwhile, here’s another one that drives me crazy (in terms of the inner torment I incur by thinking of seeming trivialities in such excruciating detail). In a nutshell, the question is: When entering the door of a building/office/store/etc., how far behind you must a person be in order for you to be obliged to hold the door for him or her?

The reason I ponder this is two-fold, really. First, I don’t want to be impolite and not hold a door for a person when I should. Second, though, is that people often hold a door open for me when I am far, far away from the door. I then feel an unspoken compulsion to walk faster to get to the door, grab hold of it, and thank the person. The thing is, I feel a little put out because I’d really prefer to saunter to the door at my own pace. But instead, I have to change what I am doing in order to accommodate someone who is trying to be nice to me. Do you see what I’m saying? In such an instance, I think it would be nicer if the person just went on his or her way and did not hold the door for me.

Think of it this way. If a person was walking three feet behind you, you would not think twice about extending the common courtesy of holding the door. But if a person was one hundred feet behind you, you would not hold the door—the thought of doing so wouldn’t even cross your mind because of the great distance.

Somewhere in between there exists what I call the “ambiguous zone.” For me, it is, say, about twenty to thirty feet. I often find myself approaching a door, knowing that someone is in that area of uncertainty. Questions begin to besiege my mind. Just how far back is the person? Are his hands full? Is he gaining on me, or am I opening on him? Should I ignore his presence back there and just blast through the door on my own? But I don’t want to be rude. If he thinks he is within a fair distance to receive such a courtesy, and I don’t give it, he might think I’m impolite. On the other hand, if I stop to hold the door, and he is further back than I thought, it could be awkward as I stand there, holding the door and waiting.

I have tentatively settled on a rule of thumb of about fifteen to twenty feet (five to seven adult paces) as the maximum distance for holding a door (barring any obvious extenuating circumstances). Anything less than this distance provides a flow of interaction where a courtesy and greeting can be naturally extended. Once you get beyond that distance, things become a bit strained, even awkward, and the courtesy you wish to extend may not even be wanted. But I must admit, even this tentative practice leaves me uncomfortable and uncertain at times.

Well, what do you say? I am overthinking the whole thing, right? There’s really no need to apply this kind of analysis to an event that lasts only a few seconds, is there?

Can I get a ruling on this?