h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Every morning, there is a steady stream of people going into my building. The problem is, the people walk to the door at comfortable intervals that keep strangers out of earshot. While this may work while walking, it provides an annoying problem for me. Trying to be a polite person, I make an effort to hold the door for a person after me, but every day I can't see how far the person behind me is, so I have to look behind and usually end up holding the door open for a full minute. And that looks dumb

This can be a problem where I am too. My solution is this:
If I am walking with someone (I ususally leave walking out with one specific person, for example) I hold the door for them.
If I am walking with a group, I hold the door for the next person, and courtesy commonly causes them to do the same.
If I am not walking directly with someone but I know there are people behind me I hold the door if they are fairly close. This often happens because everyone from one specific bus goes in the same doors at similar times. I try to glance and see if there is anyone close enough to take the door before just leaving it.
Otherwise, if the people are too far behind, I just let the door close. I ususally decide at that point that if they don't want me to hear what they are saying, I don't want to hold the door for them. (Actually, this happens after I think about stuff like this for too long.)
As a rule, I hold the door, but I don't make a point to go too far out of my way to do it.
Jen

The problem is that I never know how far away they are until t's awkward!

I try to glance backwards and look. I also find being aware of the location of other people around me helps. (This is also recommended by the teachers of my self defense unit in gym for matters of personal safety.)
And every once in a while I decide to feel entitled to not have to be courteous. Usually after I mess up holding the door, but still...

Jen

I'm too scrawny and doors are heavy

how scrawny?

Let's put it this way, I haven't done any arebic excerize since birth

Wow, I can't spell

If you're holding the door open for a group of people and don't want to end up stood there waiting for everybody to go past the best thing to do is hold the door only until the first person reaches it.

If you ensure that the door is not "fully" open (probably displaced from fully open towards the fully closed position by about 6-8 inches)they will automatically put a hand to it (trust me, it's automatic reflex) to ensure that it isn't actually shutting and therefore going to clobber them.

Once their hand touches you can let go and carry on your way.

That's what I do, but there are such clusters that they try to avoid me...