The heavy glass wing of the revolving door crashed into my hip with enough force to slam my shoulder into the wall, the impact punctuated by the sickening crack of my laptop.
It was the work of Arthur Pendleton, a man who believed common courtesy was an inefficient waste of time.
Our war started small, with him letting the lobby door slam in my face every single morning. It escalated into a daily battle of wills that ended with a useless HR meeting where his bizarre philosophy was treated as just another “work style.”
He was so focused on the petty efficiency of slamming a door that he never thought I’d find the dangerous inefficiency buried in his own structural blueprints, providing me with the perfect framework for his professional ruin.
The Closing Argument: The First Slam
It started, as most of life’s profound irritations do, as a barely noticeable blip. A flicker on the periphery of my Tuesday morning. His name, I’d later learn, was Arthur Pendleton, a man who moved through the sleek, glass-and-steel guts of our architecture firm like a ghost with bad posture.
He was always about ten paces ahead of me on the way in from the parking garage. I’d be juggling my laptop bag, a precarious tower of blueprints, and a coffee that was invariably too hot. He’d be carrying nothing but a worn leather briefcase, held with a ramrod-straight arm, as if guarding state secrets.
The first time, I just blinked. The heavy glass door of the lobby swung shut with a definitive *thump* just as I reached for the handle. My own reflection, harried and annoyed, stared back at me for a half-second before I pushed it open myself. An accident, I thought. He’s just in his own world.
But the next day, it happened again. A clean, unhesitating release of the door, timed perfectly to close just before my outstretched hand could meet the cold steel. There was no backward glance, no hesitation. It was an act of omission so complete it felt like a statement.
By Friday, it was a pattern. A tiny, infuriating ritual. Arthur Pendleton, my unwitting morning dance partner, leading me in a waltz of incivility, always ending with the percussive slam of a door he refused to acknowledge I was behind. It was a looming issue, a small crack in the veneer of my carefully managed day, and it was beginning to widen.
The Coffee Cascade
The following week, the game intensified. Or maybe I was just paying closer attention. Now, every time I saw his slumped shoulders and graying hair in the distance, a knot of adrenaline and irritation would tighten in my stomach. The twenty feet between us on the approach to any door became a battleground.
I tried speeding up, my sensible heels clacking on the polished concrete in a desperate, undignified rhythm. He’d match my pace without turning around, a sixth sense for my proximity seemingly built into his hunched frame. I tried slowing down, letting a significant gap form, only to watch him let the door swing shut on the person behind *him*, who would then, with a sigh of shared human decency, hold it for me.
Tuesday was the day the cold war got hot. I was carrying a new schematic for the Halston project, a massive, rolled-up tube that was awkward and determined to unspool. My coffee, a venti Americano, was a scalding liability in my other hand. He was right there, a perfect six feet ahead. This is it, I thought. No one, not even a sociopath, lets a door slam on someone this obviously burdened.
He reached the main entrance, pushed it open, and stepped through. I surged forward, a hopeful, pathetic little burst of speed. The door began its inward arc. It was a beautiful, slow-motion ballet of rudeness. His form disappeared into the lobby as the heavy glass panel continued its journey, closing the space between its edge and the frame with the inexorable certainty of a guillotine.
I did a clumsy hop-stop to avoid a full-body collision. The schematic tube slipped, and my coffee sloshed violently. A wave of hot, black liquid crested the lid, splashing over my hand and down the crisp white sleeve of my blouse. The pain was sharp, immediate, and utterly secondary to the geyser of pure rage that erupted in my chest.
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