Our front door was ‘upgraded’ a few days ago, and it really shattered my
faith in humanity. It probably wouldn’t have been so traumatic if I hadn’t
needed to replace my electric shaver the week before.
Allow me to explain:
My old shaver was great; it came with a handsome faux-leather carrying
case, sturdy cleaning brushes and a pop-up sideburn trimmer but, sadly, it was
getting on and was more than ready for the electric shaver retirement home so I
went out and bought a new one. The new one had no carrying case, a sorry excuse
for a cleaning brush and no pop-up trimmer. And, needless to say the device as
a whole could have served as the poster-shaver for low-quality material, poor
workmanship and a complete lack of concern for producing anything remotely
satisfying for the customer.
This, naturally, put me in that “everything just keeps getting shittier”
frame of mind so I was pre-primed when they came to ‘improve’ my door.
Still, I generally don’t invest that much emotion in a door, but this is a venerable old door: it’s the same one we’ve been using since we moved in
and, over the years, it has done everything you could ask of a door: it opened, it closed, it had a
brass letter slot that allowed the postman to slip the mail though so it landed
on the inside mat with a satisfying ‘thunk’ (and scared the life out of me
every time it happened). Granted, it had a large gash on the front, making it
look suspiciously like a battering ram had been applied to it in the past, and
pieces of the door jamb appear to have been hurriedly tacked into place, but
this only served to enhance its appeal.
(By the way, some years after we moved in, we found out that the
previous tenant had died in bed and, after not being seen for days, the police
came and battered down the door.)
Heedless of our wishes, on the appointed day a workman came to tell me
he couldn’t do the door because he had an emergency in another flat
where a woman—whose door had just been upgraded—had locked herself out because
the improved doors swing closed automatically. So he made a new appointment and
left me wondering what I would have done if I suffered the inconvenience of a
job and thinking that they were going to have a great deal of those
types of emergencies in the future.
In all the years I have lived, well, anywhere really, never once has
this thought entered my mind: “You know, if only my front door swung closed by
itself, what a huge improvement that would make to my life.”
Yes, after managing to unlock, it while carrying several bags of
groceries, I could kick it open with my foot only to have it slam closed in my
face. Or I could step outside in my bathrobe to put the trash on the front
porch only to hear the ominous sound of myself being locked out. How have I
been getting along without that innovation all these years?
And so, on the second appointed day, the workman came and ‘upgraded’ my
door. The door itself would remain, but everything associated with it—the
locks, the hinges, the letter slot—would be improved.
So the workman took the old, battered door from the door frame and spent
several noisy hours sawing and sanding and filling my flat with a thin layer of
dust. Then he returned the door to its previous location and explained the improvements.
In addition to the new self-closing hinges, the upgraded door features
the latest in letter-slot technology, which includes flaps that snap
closed (seriously, you could use them as mouse-traps) on both the outside and
the inside, and contains within something that looks like a set of miniature whisk-brooms. These are designed, of course, to make it impossible for the
postman to push your mail through. They can only stuff it in far enough so that
a bit shows on the other side and you have to wench it through the rest of the
way. A huge improvement if you like your mail crumpled and torn.
There were also improved locks, which looked a lot like the old locks
but which the workman assured me were more secure. I asked him if he might fix
the door jamb to make it so that, if someone happened to lean against the new, secure
locks, the tacked on pieces of wood wouldn’t simply snap off, but he told me
all he was authorized to do was upgrade the doors, not the door frames.
All of this put me in serious funk and left me scouring my mind for a
single example of something, anything, that had actually made my life better
for having been ‘improved’ but I could not find a single one.
It was with these grim thoughts that I went to the pub where I ordered
my usual pint and handed the requisite amount to the barkeep. Then I received a
penny back in change.
“We lowered the price of a pint,” the barkeep said, as I continued to
stare in wonder at the penny.
I smiled. “You have just restored my faith in humanity,” I said, and it
was true.
