Closed Door Policy

posted at 1:45 am
on Jul. 18, 2006

Comments: 4 so far

Permalink

Previous entry:
Am I Serious?

Next entry:
Travis Goes to a Business Lecture

Having a brother-in-law in the house for a month has been surprisingly painless.

Almost completely painless, in fact, but I can’t very well fill a blog post talking about the things he hasn’t done.

Matt does have one quirky and annoying habit.  He always closes the bathroom door.

This is a very good thing when he’s in the bathroom.

But it’s a very, very bad thing when he’s finished.

(I can hear you whispering “Travis has lost it, he’s crazy” from here, you know.)

First of all, when the bathroom door is always closed, you never know when it’s occupied.  This leads to lots of knocking, and some embarrassing moments.  I also fear it’ll lead to the ultimate embarrassing moment, if I assume that a closed door doesn’t mean occupied.

Second, a closed door can also mean “Warning, Explosive Fumes”—now, there’s no way to determine if the premises are safe for humans.  And if he leaves the fan on to clear the occasional miasma, with the door closed, the fan can’t be heard, so it runs all day.

Third, I always go to bed last.  I turn off all the lights and head upstairs in the dark, so as not to disturb the sleepers.  Not to disturb them, that is, until I PLOW into the bathroom door in pitch darkness as I head to brush my teeth.

You’d think I’d figure it out by the third time, but no, I never remember.

As an ancillary note, he doesn’t always lower the seat.  Now, I detest the guy-bashing that swirls around seat raising or lowering.  I firmly believe that a man and a woman living together need only to agree on a common, uniform seat state, whether that’s up or down.  Neither the guy nor the woman has priority here, so long as an agreement is reached.

And I think best of all is to close the toilet lid entirely—that way, you don’t drop the book you’re reading into the toilet, not that I’ve ever done that and certainly not in Grade 6 with a Robert Heinlein library book. (Damn, that sentence ended way too late.)

So all I’m saying is that it’s a little odd that he’s got a 56-and-0 record for door closing, but he leaves the seat as open as the source code for Firefox.

Matt goes back to Boston on Friday to set up Hop Studios East.  I’ll be sad to see him go… but I might just leave the front door open when he leaves.

Who has mentioned this item?

Keywords: bathroom  •  door  •  etiquette  •  habit  •  hop studios  •  matt  •  open  •  susie

Previous entry:
Am I Serious?

Next entry:
Travis Goes to a Business Lecture