It may be a curse but I have a tendency to observe my surroundings with an eye towards whether things are working well or are designed badly. Some might say it’s the engineer in me but I think it more likely derives from my training as a navy technician. On a ship or a submarine, it is imperative that things work well and if they don’t, someone needs to notice.

Or maybe I’m a touch OCD, I don’t know.

We have a Safeway grocery store here in Bend that I like to patronize. It’s big, new, not far from home and offers most of what I buy at a fair price. Like most big grocery stores, this Safeway has two entrance-exits, one at each end of the store as you walk towards it from the expansive parking lot. I use the one on the left because that’s the direction I typically enter the parking lot from. Each entrance-exit has two automatic doors for entry and two for exiting. Additionally, because Bend gets cold in the winter, they are double doors with a space in between to keep the cold air out. That is, you walk through one of the exterior doors and then though an interior door a few feet beyond with the exterior door closing behind you.

It’s a familiar and simple setup that should work well. Except it doesn’t. There is a huge flaw in the design that I have trouble grasping why the building designers didn’t recognize.

Let’s examine three key aspects of the door and building layout. First, as you walk towards the building, the entry doors are on the right, the exit doors on the left. Second, in the space between the exterior and interior doors is where the carts are kept. They are stashed to your left as you walk in. Finally, as you walk through the interior door, you’ll see the bank of checkout stations on your right.

So here’s what happens when you go in to shop. You approach the entrance doors on the right and one or both open as you get close. You walk through and turn left to grab a cart. As you’re doing that, someone exiting the store may be coming through and you’ll cross paths, either while you’re reaching for a cart or as you back one out. Also, as you go to grab a cart, because you’re stepping right past the exterior exit doors, the sensor for those doors will detect your presence and will open both doors.

Once you navigate that bit of design stupidity, you push a cart through an interior door (which is to the right of the exit doors, recall) into the store to shop. Yay! Except also recall that the checkout stations are on your right and as is typical with grocery stores, there is a alley between the stations and the back wall (where they keep various stuff like bank branches, maybe the pharmacy, a lot of vending type machines, etc.). As people complete the checkout process, they head for the door down this alley. They head for the exit doors. Which are on the other side of the door you just came in through. So more crossed paths, this time with both of you pushing carts.

Why aren’t the entrance doors on the left and the exit doors on the right? How does a building designer not think of that? I can imagine the possibility that there might be some confounding building code that demands it but I don’t think so. There’s no reason for that and I’ve seen entry-exit doors reversed in other places.

So I notice that every time I shop there. And it bugs me.