Locked doors...

Ok, here's a question. I'll set up a scenario for you.

You're walking up to a business establishment. It has a nice matched pair of glass doors in the front, the sort where each of the two covers half of a single, wide doorway. You reach for a door... and it's locked. So, grumbling, you reach for the other door, which is of course unlocked.

Why lock one of a pair of doors?

I would guess that they are not locking one but merely UNLOCKING one. L-Z.

Not much traffic.

One door loses less heat or cooling than a double door opening for a grand entrance.

Rampant small-minded discrimination against the left-handed. It's always the left door that is locked. ;)

In most of the places I've worked a key unlocks one of the doors. The other door has those annoying flip toggles with one at the top and one at the bottom. The average height employee can't easily pry the top one open so the door simply remains toggled shut.
This doesn't answer the question why the door was designed that way.

So I think my answer is laziness or that it's funny to sit and watch people try to open the wrong door.

*edited for #6

#5
You mean "pry". But maybe they could "pray" it open?

I was once in a courtroom when a defendant who had just been sentenced took off running. The bailiff took off after him -- and ran right into the locked half of the door!

readafew, all I have to say to you is :P

I'd wondered about heating, but surely it doesn't make much difference. The doors wouldn't usually be open at the same time. Though it does seem like the sort of thing that might get pushed down from on high regardless of whether it really matters or not.

The laziness or short-people things I can see... or that they enjoy watching us, which would also explain why my grumbles to the poor low-level employees who have to put up with cranky customers never get me an actual answer :)

I'd never paid much attention to which door it is, but now that you mention it it does seem to be the left, going in. There's one place around here that actually has a little plaque on the left-hand door that says it's locked.

lilithcat, that's hilarious... sounds like something they'd have done on Andy Griffith.

If they have a lighted Exit sign above those doors, they BOTH need to be unlocked whenever the establishment is open for business. The Life Safety Code requires it. If I find inoperable exit doors, I usually try to have a polite discussion with the manager on duty. However, if they don't appear interested, I will not hesitate to call the local fire marshal for enforcement (business number please, NOT 911).

Why make such an issue of it? Here are a few reasons:
1903 Iroquois Theater fire, Chicago - 602 fatalities
1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, New York - 146 fatalities
1940 Rhythm Night Club fire, Natchez, MS - 207 fatalities
1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, Boston - 492 fatalities
1944 Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus fire, Hartford - 168 fatalities
1946 Winecoff Hotel fire, Atlanta - 119 fatalities
1958 Our Lady of the Angels School fire, Chicago - 95 fatalities
1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, Southgate, KY - 165 fatalities
1986 Dupont Plaza Hotel, San Juan, Puerto Rico – 97 fatalities
1990 Happy Land Social Club fire, Bronx, NY – 87 fatalities
2003 The Station Nightclub fire, W. Warwick, RI – 100 fatalities

In each case cited above, limited exit capacity (locked, obstructed, or just plain inadequate) prevented the occupants from escaping. Inadequate exits do not cause fires, but they do aggravate dangerous conditions created by other design or operations issues.

Peronally, I think there are too many people on this site with way too much time on their hands and nothing to do.

READ A BOOK!

better yet:

WRITE A BOOK (about the above subject). If you can get 200 plus pages out of that, you probably deserve to be on the NYT best seller lists.

9)
There was the famous case in Northern Spain. They tried to put all their Basques into one exit.

That's Slick Ringman LOL