Americans disagree about so many things, many of them unimportant. Should you use a gas stove or an electric stove, for example? And the Oxford comma! These little things become symbolic of larger things, and we fight about the little things. I am laissez-faire. I have my views. In my personal life, I am anti–Oxford comma and anti–gas stove. But if you wish to use a gas stove or the Oxford comma, be my guest.

But there is one thing all Americans agree on: People who don’t thank you when you hold the door for them are the worst.

“Why don’t some people say ‘thank you’ when you hold a door for them?” asks someone on Quora. The answers ranged from “Because they are, as we say in the UK, ungrateful wankers” to “lack of manners.” Even Ellen Degeneres has marveled at the ingratitude of these people.

I am one of those awful people.

I am often distracted, and sometimes I don’t even notice that someone is standing there holding the door for me until rage engulfs me from the right or the left. Once, this happened to me as I left district court in Brooklyn. When I realized that I had not thanked a door holder (“You’re welcome!” he sputtered in indignation), I said, “Oh, my gosh. I am sorry. I didn’t see you. Thank you for holding the door.” The man just shook his head in disgust. He refused to accept my apology. It was unforgivable, what I had done to him. There would be no atoning.

Sometimes, I notice that someone has held a door for me only moments before I head through the door and cannot catch my breath in time to mutter a thank-you, so I opt at the last moment for a (charming, I think) smile and a grateful nod. This sometimes does the trick; often it does not.

For example, when my first daughter was a newborn, my wife, Isabel, and I celebrated my first Father’s Day at Junior’s, the venerable diner with the great cheesecake. Isabel was still recuperating from a difficult birth (our oldest daughter had a gigantic head at birth, a truly immense and monstrous head), so I carried the baby carriage up the steps that led to the cheesecake sanctuary.

A kindly, heavyset woman opened the door for me with a smile.

Although she was indeed holding the door for me, she was also blocking the doorway with her body, which made entry more difficult than it would have been had she not bothered. Generally doing fine, but struggling a bit with the immense baby carriage in the now-narrower doorway (an immense baby carriage was necessary just to hold our baby daughter’s gargantuan head), I smiled (charmingly, I really thought) and, out of breath, I grunted a graciously appreciative but apparently incomprehensible grunt of thanks.

The smile melted off the kindly, heavyset woman’s face.

“Where is that word?” she asked loudly as I struggled into the restaurant.

My wife interposed herself between us.

“You fucking asshole,” the woman screamed into the restaurant after me. “Where are your manners, you rude fucking dickhead? ‘Thank you?’ Where is my ‘thank you‘?”

The people in the restaurant laughed and cheered from their seats. My daughter began to cry.

“Please stop,” Isabel said quietly to the woman. “Please. It’s Father’s Day.” She whispered, “It’s his first Father’s Day.”

“Fuck you both!” the woman screamed, her throat now ragged. “Fuck you, you motherfucking rude dick-ass motherfuckers!”

.

So, just a couple of things.

First, failing to thank someone for a favor that I neither asked for nor wanted is not a horrifying offense. If I ask you to hold the door for me, I will thank you for it. If I do not ask (and I won’t) then I will open my own door for my own damn self.

If, for some reason, you choose to open a door and hold it for a man who is fully capable of opening it himself, or, as was the case at Junior’s, fully capable of pushing it open with one shoulder, then that is on you. I’ll thank you if I notice, if my own thoughts about life, the world, my problems and my long-dead childhood puppy are not consuming me to distraction. If I don’t thank you, then go about your business and forget about me.

Second, correcting a stranger’s manners, especially over something so minor, is ruder than the original slight, as none other than Miss Manners has confirmed. And certainly, calling a young new mom and dad “motherfucking rude dick-ass motherfuckers” is ruder than failing to mutter “thank you.”

For an act of generosity to be truly generous, the giver cannot demand any kind of recompense, as Jacques Derrida has noted.

Yes, I went there: Jacques Derrida. He agrees with me. Jacques Derrida is team Preiss. (Wherever you are, Jacques.)

I would go one step further: when I walk around the city, minding my own business, and I do not need help, I am not about to step in front of a car, I have not fallen to the pavement in the throes of a heart attack, when I am in my own space and have not reached out to anyone for assistance, I have not given you permission to enter my life.

If you want to see if I am willing to let you into my life, go ahead and reach out, but you do not have a right to enter my life if I do not let you in. You do not have any right to my engagement if I choose not to engage, and you do not have any right to my gratitude if you choose to offer me a favor that I have not asked for and do not want and do not even notice.

Let me give you an example.

Recently, I was out walking my dog. A sixtyish bespectacled man came up to me.

“Hey,” he said. “What is that, a chocolate lab?” I muttered yeah, although my dog is not a chocolate lab. I wanted to tell him that it was none of his business, and also to wonder why in the world he could possibly care what kind of dog I own. I didn’t, though; I just said yeah and continued on my way.

You would not approach my window when I am in my apartment with the dog curled up at my feet, tap on the window pane and call out, “Hey, what kind of dog is that?” You would not hover near my front door as I leave my apartment so that you can hold the door for me. Why do you do these things when I walk about the city?

I have a dog whom I love, and I like to spend time with that dog, just the dog and me. I don’t need your company when I am with my dog.

Likewise, I am a reasonably sturdy man, I walk unassisted, I can push my own door open. When I walk my dog, I like to be alone with my dog, and when I walk through doors, I like to be alone with my thoughts. Doors are profound things, after all; one day, we will all go through that final doorway. I am likely to go through it soon. What will it be like? These are the kinds of things I think about when I walk through a door. Don’t interrupt me; it is a sacred moment for me.

Really, everyone: Don’t hold the door for me. I will get along fine without you.

^^^

Alon Preiss is the author of a couple of novels that were published by Chickadee Prince Books before Steve Acunto took over the company and they went out of print. He has written a third novel that is pretty damn good, come to think of it, and which was under contract with Chickadee Prince Books before Steve Acunto took over the company.

Photograph by Darya Sannikova / Pexels.