Automatic sliding doors are awkward.

As a simple Smiths customer I walk up to the those dreaded doors with pure fear of not only embarrassment but also for the awkward dance that might come out of my feet trying to get it to open up and let me in.

The plexi-glass plastic is covered with the smeared fingerprints of the pour souls it didn’t open for. This impends nothing but deep impending doom.

You cannot just walk up to these doors either. One must walk in a medium fashion. If you go too slow- you look like a loser who is afraid of sliding doors. If you go too fast, there is that slight chance the door will not open as fast as you walk leaving you looking like a loser on the floor with a broken nose from running into the sliding door.

And it is nothing but pure awkwardness when you stand in front of it and well… it doesn’t open. The store is clearly open (you know this by the copious amounts of hungry faced shoppers, the “not happy I didn’t graduate from college” workers, and there is a giant, neon, blue and pink, flashing, OPEN sign right above your head.)

You teeter back and forth in confusion; your face flamed red with those little beads of salty sweat forming at your hairline, waiting until the damn door automatically slides open. You don’t know if you should just try the other pair of automatic sliding doors or maybe you should just walk away pretending that you are talking to someone on your cell phone about how you forgot that you do not need to go to grocery store because you don’t need that toilet paper anyways.

Then the moment of rapture comes and the door opens.

(Pause for dramatic effect.)

You walk in, trying to act causal. Look around. No one is looking at you. So then you run to the produce isle (because lets face it.. there is nothing more comforting that standing next to a wooden crate of neon ripe green bananas.)

You do your shopping and life seems like nothing but bunnies and happiness sprinkles with rainbows and glitter.

Until you start to exit and realize that you have to use the 

automatic sliding door again.