Open Doors

For the longest time, open doors bothered me. The door to my bedroom would always be closed, even when I wan't watching porn. It just gave me a feeling of privacy and peace. Last year,  during my lengthy stay in India, I tried keeping the door open and to be honest, it wasn't the same. I sympathize with people who feel more comfortable behind close doors.

But, obviously, the preference for closed doors isn't sacrosanct. Our new PhD office is divided into  two rooms, unlike our old sprawling office. The  problem is one of the rooms is always too hot while the other is too cold, due to some quirk of air-conditioning in our "Smart" building. The obvious  solution is to keep the connecting door open and allow the temperature to equalize in both rooms. But one of our  new colleagues doesn't like the door open. She has her back to the door, so she doesn't have a reason to object. Her most frequent excuse is to block the sound if someone is talking in our room. So, now, we talk in whispers, barely giving her an opportunity to complain. To me, it is obvious that she is one of the those people who works better inside closed rooms. But, in a shared office, you can't put your comfort above those of others.

And, she does sneaky things like closing the door when we are away for a short while. Or, she will close the top latch of one of the doors, as though saying if she can't have the doors closed at least she will have her say in which door is open. Now, me and my colleague prop the door open just to assert our presence. It is childish and exhausting, but seeing her try to throw her weight around is quite annoying.