Convenience Store Doors and Manners

I know I wrote about Wawa in the past, but there is something I have always noticed and its a piece of suburbia (and cities too) that intrigues me.   For those not from this geography, picture a 7-11 or Turkey Hill, Cumberland Farms convenience store done at the pinnacle of the craft.   www.Wawa.com . 

The newest ones are massive with amazingly great coffee - many types, great deli sandwiches of many many kinds and massive quantities of soda types.  

But I am not writing this to champion their stores (okay, so I have already), but to talk about manners around holding the door for each other going in and out of the stores.    You see, the doors are manual ones that only swing out.  A store like the one above will sell 10,000 cups of coffee in a week (maybe more - I don't know).  They sell gas, ciggies and lots of other stuff that you make a quick trip in and out AND here's the point of this blog entry - EVERYONE holds the door for everybody, or so it seems.  Our world has so few places where people are helpful to one another and polite enough to pause in their busy days to stop and hold a door.  For men or women holding the door for me or women. 

And maybe, maybe, if you project this outward beyond just  a fast food store door, you can see that there is hope for humanity.  I know that is a stretch to believe, but maybe, just maybe it tells us that in this world of suburbia and urban isolation, red:blue separation and its associated vitriol, that in the simple act of stopping in the morning for a coffee and a Shortie Hoagie (ref - zep, hero, sub, etc.) for your lunch, you make the world heal a bit by just pausing and holding a door for a fellow human.  And that, I believe, is a sign of hope for us all.