I hope you're doing well.
I have a horrifying story for you about doors. Ready? Here you go!
A couple of months ago, I was on a surgery rotation. This means I was spending approximately 14 hours per day at the hospital and subsisting on an amusingly tiny ration of sleep. As I stumbled in early one Sunday morning, I noticed several women in scrubs pushing a dog on a gurney towards the hospital doors.
Now, the emergency entrance at the University of Awesome vet hospital is clearly marked. The "EMERGENCY" sign is a helpful beacon for frantic clients who are (understandably) lost in the twisty insane campus roads leading to the hospital.
There's a set of automatic doors that "whoosh" open as you approach, allowing you into a vestibule. Then there's a set of card-access-only automatic doors that let you enter the hospital waiting room. AND THEN there's yet another set of card-access-only (different card needed from the first set of doors*) doors to enter the hospital proper.
I caught up with the ER doctors as they wheeled the gurney towards the automatic doors. We all piled into the vestibule, and one doctor swiped her card for entry. The doors beeped and remained closed. She tried again - no luck. I tried my ID, which the doors also rejected.
The big black dog on the gurney turned her head a tiny bit. She looked at me with big liquid brown eyes. She blinked. One of the doctors punched the doors and cursed.
I dropped my bag and sprinted out the first set of doors, around the building (it's a big building), through the also-card-access-only academic-entrance doors, down the picture hallway, through the internal hospital entrance, past the surgery and medicine departments, around by pharmacy and through the waiting room. I met the group trapped in the vestibule from the other side, and we pried the doors apart.
We raced the big black dog through the waiting room and the last set of doors, and down the long hallway to the emergency room. I retrieved my bag and checked in on my surgery patient. When I peered in the ER windows a few minutes later, the ER docs were performing CPR on the big black dog. The minutes lost while fighting with the doors - those minutes mattered.
You guys, I understand that doors are important. It is very, very key that we have systems in place to prevent psychotic humans from rampaging around the vet hospital with violent intentions.
However, we have an emergency room. When there's an emergency, the doors to the emergency room need to motherfucking open. Right?
*so essentially, we need two separate IDs to get into different portions of the hospital after hours.