Door Holding Etiquette Being a generally polite person, I usually hold doors for people. But lately I started wondering what proper etiquette in these situations? Obviously if a person is two steps from the door it's polite to stand there and hold it for them. Equally obvious is when that person is 100 yards away. Somewhere between these two points is the fine line between polite guy holding the door and psycho stalker freak standing in the open doorway.

I want to know where this line is. Is it five feet from the door or twenty? Really, though, I don't think it's a set distance. I think there is a somewhat complex equation used to determine where to draw the line. You need to give certain people more distance than others. Someone on crutches gets maybe ten extra feet whereas Mr. Mullet gets a few feet subtracted. There is also weather to consider. If someone is rushing to the door to beat a thunderstorm, you probably need to give a little more leeway.

And then there is the whole hotness factor. The amount of additional distance given for someone is proportional to there coefficient of hotness. Again up to a point. SO I don't think it's a simple linear scale. So you have a base distance which gets adjusted based on some combination of ability to open the door themselves, the weather, and probably most important, the hotness coefficient. Now if I can just figure out how to put them together...  ¶ 8:10 PM 0 comments