The Hardest Button to Button

The bathroom across the hall from my office at work sports one of those push "open the door for the handicapped person" buttons. It looks like one of the push buttons that you would see by the glass doors at Macy's or Nordstrom's. You know, the places that are too classy to have automatic doors because that would be so "walmart" of them. For the most part, only people that truly need the button at the mall use them. The buttons usually are so painstakingly slow that any sane, able-bodied person would avoid making all the shoes and purses that are to be bought wait any longer to finally find their place in life in the arms of girl who will love them to the end of their days.

However, the pushing of the button in the bathroom across the hall opens the door surprisingly fast. Like most doors, one side has a handle and the other side a plain silver panel, the universal sign for "all you have to do is push and I will open." The silver panel side faces out, therefore, you push the door to enter the bathroom. Pushing a door is not a difficult thing to do. This is not an overly heavy door and even if it was, I doubt I would ever push the button to open it. However on the way out of the bathroom, almost everyone pushes the button. Once one washes their hands, the general rule is to avoid touching any part of the public restroom (including the faucet to turn the water off and the paper towel lever) if at all possible. I must admit, that being forced to pull open the door of a public bathroom upon exit tends to gross me out a bit. This is why I am always under the persuasion that the universal "all you have to do is push and I will open" panel should be on the inside of a public restroom thus ridding the world of any queasy feeling they may receive when the thoughts of all the unwashed hands before them that have opened that specific door flow through their minds.

That said, I completely understand and follow in line with the 99% of the women that push the button on the way out of the bathroom across the hall. However, is it really necessary to push the button on the way into the bathroom? Depending on which direction you are coming from, you may have to walk a step or two past the door to push the button. Is it really that difficult to push the door? Granted, it is no push button, but it is not a heavy door. You don't even have to use your hands to open it if you don't want to, thus eliminating "the germs on the door will give me syphilis" excuse. You may think, "No, people this lazy can't exist." Au contraire, they do. I file these people under the same heading as the people who take the elevator two floors down to the cafeteria every morning to BUY THEIR DOUGHNUTS.