"...bang the door with force, its useless!!..."

"...bang the door with force, its useless!!..."

...exclaimed the uncle, giving the poor door an angry stare. 

We have an old-fashioned lift in our building. It has two grills that need to be slid shut for the lift to move up/down. There is a door on the outside and then one on the inside that is attached to the moving unit. If either of the doors doesnt close well, the lift lady will keep on saying "Please close the door, kripaya darwaza band kijiye" till the end of eternity (were you to not pay heed to her request). 

Lately, it has been seen that when one enters the lift on the ground floor, even though one shuts the doors properly, the lady keeps singing. As a result, people keep sliding the grills back and forth. Two things are noticeable :-

1. Every person uses increasing force to bang the door shut with each attempt.

2. Nearly everyone fiddles with and closes the door closest to them, the grill connected to the lift.

On this particular day, only three of us were in the lift: a young man, the uncle, and myself. When the lady kept asking us to shut the door, the uncle seemed annoyed and asked the young chap to shut the inner door with force. 

There are a couple of noteworthy observations here.

1. This problem only occurs on the ground floor, not on any other floor. If the inside door was the issue, it would affect all floors.

2. The outer door issue wasn't getting fixed even when people banged it with force. However, something eventually clicked, coz the lift would move after a few tries. 

Later that day, I faced the same issue when I was coming up again. I closed the doors but the lift lady refused to stop talking. I opened the outer door again and gently slid it shut until it couldn't move any further. That was it, the lift lady took a chill pill and the lift moved up. Apparently, there's an issue with the outer door that causes it to rebound slightly when shut forcefully, breaking the connection. When closed gently, it stays put. However, most people (myself included initially) were using force to shut it, assuming it required strength.

1. Often, when we face a problem, we instinctively knock or hit the nearest / most accessible door, without logically considering which one needs attention.

2. When things don’t work as expected, often force/push/pressure comes as the first line of action, whereas sometimes it is the exact opposite of the actual need. Only when the force fails to yield, do we try a softer approach, instead of the other way round. 

"Bola na, zor se band karo tabhi hota hai" [Told you, use force to make it work], the uncle had said. Little did he know that the lift eventually moved due to luck, not force.

What we believe works well, isn't always what truly works well.