Soon plans won’t be needed, or architects in Cuba, at least in what they referred to the design of the doors in their buildings. The practice is turning them into a vacant job.
They are determined to plan them, in placing them in the right places, to allow convenient access and easy removal, beat the heat in the Tropics, and alleviate the queues that we usually live in almost any errand.
But … the directive caste at different levels is determined to ignore them. The bathroom doors are the favorite candidates. Boarded up, sealed, nailed, closed. May be the same in a theater that in a school. It’s a philosophy: shut it instead of fixing it.
In the interprovincial bus fleet of brand new the Chinese Yutong that circulate throughout the long, narrow Cuban geography, same thought prevails: close before cleaning. No matter that the toilets work. You cannot use them. If need is too strong… you will have to get off.
No matter if it is a cafe or a shop; if it has artificial climate or not; if there are physically six, four or two doors. You will face a pandemic: the only door that opens, you can only use a half sheet. And you, dear customer, will have to almost rub the custodian of the place, to enter or exit.
Dare to go through, for example, the half door of a bus station, loaded with luggage … and tell me.
They are poor doors that do not perform, rotting in their hinges. Poor of us that are forced to use them unfailingly.
The repertoire of pretenses abounds, what missing are the rational solutions.
They are closed to the comfort, to logic, to courtesy, to sensitivity. Doors open to facile, open doors to irritation.
In some places I asked the reason and have received tremendous, surreal answers. I stopped trying. The customer is never right.
