Double doors: Do we only want to use the door they locked, or, do they lock the door everyone wants to use?

I know that sorta pisses me off at times I will just unlock the locked one.
I could never figure out why they couldn’t just unlock both.

Your natural instinct is to reach for the right door as you approach the store.

When the store opens, the natural instinct for the perso inside its unlock the door on the right. But the door on the right on the inside is the door on the left on the outside. So you get frustrated tha the “wrong” door is still locked.

Drives me a little crazy too. C’est la vie.

The two businesses I frequent?
One has the right door locked, the other has the left.

A lot of commercial doors have that bolt at the top, @SQUEEKY2, and it’s a chore unlocking when you need too.

That’s interesting, @zenvelo. So it would vary whether the person unlocked for the day as they entered, or unlocked from inside at opening time.

I suspect it is a bias in your memory. Getting the right door isn’t memorable, while trying the wrong door is slightly more memorable. So you visit these shops 100 times, and guess the correct door 50 times. You’ve still got it wrong 50 times, which must get very frustrating.

Confirmation bias, methinks. We don’t mentally catalog all the times a thing works as expected, only when it does not.

It’s what @zenvelo said. Most people reach with their right (the majority of the population is right handed). The person inside uses their right, and the person outside. It’s rare a shop owner opens for the day from the outside.

Confirmation bias might play a part also.

Depending on the type of door, it might be one door is a simple twist lock, and the other door has slide locks into the floor and above the door. For this type of double door, unlocking the second door is more effort and more troublesome, but this type is usually on residential not commercial. Commercial might have locks that anchor to the floor, but usually they are a twist lock control also.

I find it annoying that one door is left locked. That shouldn’t be the case in a commercial situation. Sometimes it’s a mistake, and they just failed to twist all the locks.

I love double doors, at home I always open both in a dramatic, slightly camp fashion so as to announce my presence in grand style, the staff applaud by way of sychophancy…mostly

I always wondered why have double doors if you’re going to keep one of them locked.

The one that’s locked is now broken because everyone used it. That’s why they locked it.