A few things. I am classifying this as a “rant” but it’s not quite a rant. Think of it as a rant-lite. So, first of all, check out this clip from our corporate intranet.

So, when I first saw this last week, I was figuring the headline was going to be something like

“Mason, OH (AP): Tragedy struck the recycling center today. 3 are dead with 25 injured as a fire broke out in the recycle center at Luxottica Retail. As of now, the details are not clear, but it appears that the sun’s rays broke through the window and were concentrated by the prisms in the lenses to be recycled, starting this deadly fire.

I was relieved to see that it was nothing so dramatic…

The other thing to mention was my belief that the place I work at is excessive on its door-holding. Let me explain… Actually, before I do that, let me back up. I have no problem with in-place door holding. What I mean by that is if I’m in the front of a line of people, when I open the door, I will hold it behind me as I go through the door. I think this is pretty standard behavior.

But here at work, EVERYONE is all about holding the door open for everyone. Like if you see someone 100 feet away, people will stop and wait and hold the door for them. Or people will stop and hold the door for an entire group of people. It makes it hard to know how to approach the door. Do you take it normally, figuring that you’ll have to wait for the person in front of you to go through the door? Or do you speed up, figuring the person in front of you will hold it open for you. And plus then you have to deal with the annoying pause as 2 people try to decide who is going to actually go through the door first. Shuggleftulation, anyone?

So I can’t decide if I’m just insensitive and hate serving my fellow man, or if others also feel this way but are just oppressed by the obsessive culture of door-holding. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with holding the door for someone (i.e. if you’re on a date or something), but this bothers the efficient part of me.

So, having said that, this reminded me of a similar web page I read awhile back about parking in parking garages. The author’s premise is that it is actually significantly faster if, when parking in a garage, and finding an open space, you first check to see if anybody is behind you. If nobody is behind you, then pull into it, but if someone is behind you then you should leave that space and continue onward. It seems counter-intuitive, and is actually a loser for the front car, but it appears to be SIGNIFICANTLY faster for all the cars. Obviously it wouldn’t work in practice because you have to get EVERYONE to do it. See a few paragraphs down for the link to the site for more info.

Anyways, so while thinking about the door-holding, I am reminded of this site, but then I can’t figure out where I read it. I try searching various terms in Google, but I was having no luck. All I could remember was the basic concept (as descibed above) and the fact that it was not the main section of this person’s website, but rather more of an off-shoot. I found it interesting when I tried the search terms theory parking garage “road geek” (which was probably my 10th or 15th try), one of the 6 sites returned was this very blog, to a post I wrote a few weeks ago. It had parking garage and theory in the text, though not road geek, so I don’t know if Google just returned it because it had 3 of the 5 terms, or if it just figured out I was a road geek.

Anyway, a few hours later (and in the middle of this post), I found the site. As I remembered, it was an offshoot of the actual site, being a site dedicated to visiting all 241 stations of the London Underground in record times.

PS – big deal at Meijer this week – more details to follow. But if you live in Cincinnati and want to know more, let me know. Or, just, you know, pick up the Meijer ad and turn to page 6.