The weighted self-closing office door does not lock properly by itself at times. Whenever the problem becomes especially bad, which is not good for security, the situation is announced by email to all staff, who are reminded to be especially careful, to manually close it. When it gets repaired, users are told so, which has the accidental undesired effect of staff’s mindfulness with the door becoming more switched off, due to the assumption that it is working fine now. Auto-closing door means auto-unmindfulness?
Because of this, the cycle repeats… The door is later discovered to be malfunctioning – by chance – due to it being taken for granted, letting it swing too much. This raises an interesting question – Is the door really faulty or the mindfulness of the staff faulty? Or, which is worse? How can we test for the answer? Simple – by not announcing that the door is ‘okay’ after it gets fixed the next time. This will mean everyone knows they are supposed to be mindful with the door every time they use it, which hopefully leads to less door problems. Then again, if there is the need to be manually mindful each time, there might be no need for an auto-door?