Why Can't They Figure This Out

It happened again at church. It always happens at church so the fact that it happened isn't really that special but for some reason I pondered it a bit more today. It isn't just at church. It happens all over the place but it happens plenty, maybe most at church so I'll use that as the example.

The service ends. The auditorium is dismissed. Everyone gets up and heads out.

Our church is big so there are probably 3 (maybe 4 - I didn't count) isles people use to get out of the main auditorium. We stood, stepped into the isle...and stood there. After a bit I looked around at the other isles. One was scooting along at a decent clip. Another was moving, moving slowly mind you, but moving. Ours was more or less stopped.

I found my self doing a process analysis trying to determine what made the difference. All the isles seemed to be the same size and it didn't take long to understand that our isle had some folks from the last row on the left that realized they knew/liked some folks from the right side of the last row. Both groups came out, noticed each other, and stopped to have a warm and friendly social session.

Key word is "stopped".

Our church has an enormous (I'm talking 15 yards deep enormous) area behind the seats where folks could stand without any obstruction to the flow of people. Had these folks in the last row managed to take 11 steps the whole isle would have been moving. Instead, they chose to save those eleven steps and stop everyone else in that third of the church from going anywhere.

Eventually the other isles all cleared out and people from our isle started going through the rows of seats to another isle so they could get moving again as the happy gabbers continued their motion halting catch up conversation.

As I cleared the trek across the row and up another isle I was pondering the fact that we never teach people the auditorium clearing process. We never explain that there are hundreds of square yards of space in the back that I assume was put there to prevent such artery clogging situations. Maybe the people just didn't know.

We were going through the first set of auditorium doors as I pondered the fact that the people flow was so obvious to me and wondered if these other people knew and didn't care of didn't know. I considered the fact that I actually do process improvement as part of my profession and tried to balance that against a nagging voice that suggested that some folks might be so self involved that they can't notice that they are creating a situation of inconvenience for literally hundreds of other people rather than take 11 steps.

As I processed these thoughts I reached the second set of double doors and noticed another "clot" of probably 8 or 9 people blocking 4 of the 9 doors. As we slowly moved forward toward the 4 doors that were still unblocked I saw that one of the 9 folks blocking the 4 doors was on her cell phone. As I slowly passed I heard say "You can't miss us. We're standing right in front of the doors on the left side. We'll stay right here until you find us..."

Quickly my analysis of the auditorium people flow dynamic changed from process analysis to a new stream of consciousness pondering the true dividing line between ignorance and stupidity.