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.
The Half-Second Shrug
The burn was a dull throb, a physical manifestation of the fury coursing through me. I looked at the dark, spreading stain on my cuff, then at the closed door. Through the glass, I could see his back retreating toward the elevator bank, oblivious. Or not. With him, it was impossible to tell, and that was the most maddening part.
The next day, I was prepared for battle. No coffee. No blueprints. Just my laptop bag slung over my shoulder like a weapon. I saw him by the garage elevator, and I stalked him, staying just far enough behind to make my approach to the lobby door a calculated sprint.
He was five feet from the door. I was fifteen. I broke into a near-jog. My bag bounced against my hip. I was going to make it. I was going to catch the door right as his hand left it, forcing an interaction, a moment of shared space he so desperately avoided.
His hand pushed the bar. He stepped through. I was right there, my own hand outstretched, my fingers inches from the metal. And then, he did something new. He gave the door an almost imperceptible shove backward as he let go. A little flick of the wrist that accelerated its swing, erasing the half-second of grace I might have had.
The door slammed shut with a deafening *whump*, the air pressure puffing my hair back. My hand hit the glass with a dull smack.
I snapped.
I shoved the door open so hard it banged against the stopper and stood in the doorway, my heart hammering. He had only taken a few steps. He stopped and, for the first time, turned to look at me. His face was a bland landscape of indifference—thin lips, pale eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, skin the color of old paper.
“Wow,” I said, my voice tight and shaky. “Couldn’t wait half a second?”
He looked at me, then at the door, then back at me. A slow, deliberate blink was his only immediate response. Then, he gave a small, infuriatingly casual lift of one shoulder. A shrug. He turned and walked away without a word, leaving me standing there, vibrating with a rage so pure it felt like a religious experience.
The Homefront Anomaly
“He *shrugged*?” Mark asked later that night, his attention only half-pulled from the basketball game on TV. He was trying to sound sympathetic, but I could hear the undercurrent of amusement in his voice.
“It wasn’t just a shrug, Mark. It was… a dismissal. It was a dissertation on contempt delivered in a single twitch of a deltoid.” I was pacing the living room, gesturing wildly with the spatula I’d been using to stir the pasta sauce.
“A dissertation on contempt,” he repeated slowly, a smile playing on his lips. “Okay, Sarah, I think your inner architect is getting a little dramatic.”
I stopped pacing and glared at him. “It’s not dramatic. It’s the principle of the thing! We live in a society. There are unspoken rules. You hold the door for the person behind you. You say please and thank you. You don’t act like other human beings are inconvenient obstacles in your personal runway.”
Our son, Leo, wandered into the room, his face illuminated by the glow of his phone. “Who’s on a runway?” he asked, his thumbs still flying across the screen.
“A guy at Mom’s office who doesn’t understand basic physics or human decency,” Mark said, finally turning away from the game. “He lets the door slam in her face.”
Leo looked up, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Like, on purpose?”
“Yes! On purpose!” I exclaimed, feeling a surge of validation. “Thank you, Leo. Your father thinks I’m losing my mind.”
“Well,” Mark hedged, holding up his hands in surrender, “I’m just saying, is this guy—Arthur, you said?—really worth this much of your energy? He’s just some miserable dude. Let it go. Don’t let him win.”
But that was the problem. Letting it go felt exactly like letting him win. It felt like conceding that his brand of casual, corrosive disrespect was an acceptable part of the world. I looked from my well-meaning husband back to my son, who had already retreated into the digital world of his phone. I was on my own in this. The war had been declared with a shrug, and I was the only one who seemed to have gotten the memo.
The Principles of Engagement: The Race to the Threshold
The shrug changed everything. It transformed a passive annoyance into an active conflict. My morning commute was no longer about getting to work; it was a strategic planning session. The twenty feet of polished concrete leading to the lobby doors became my personal racetrack, and Arthur Pendleton was the ghost I had to beat.
I started leaving the house five minutes earlier, timing my arrival to coincide with a lull in the parking garage traffic. My new goal was simple: get to the door first. If I was the one holding the door, I controlled the interaction. I could hold it open and force him to either walk through, acknowledging my existence, or take a ridiculously long way around, which would be a victory in itself.
The first time I succeeded, my heart was pounding like a drum solo. I saw his beige sedan pull into its spot as I was getting out of my car. I practically sprinted. I hit the door, pushed through, and then pivoted, planting my foot to keep it open, a triumphant smile plastered on my face.
He approached, his pace unhurried. He saw me. He saw the open door. He saw my expectant grin. He met my eyes for a fleeting, dead-eyed moment, then altered his course, walking a wide, ten-foot arc to the adjacent, unopened door, pushed it open himself, and disappeared inside.
He preferred to open his own door rather than walk through the one I held for him. The sheer, deliberate effort of the rejection was breathtaking. It wasn’t about convenience or efficiency. It was a philosophy. My smile faded. This wasn’t a race; it was an ideological battle.
About the Author
