Mar 24 2006
a walk on the wrong side
do you walk down corridors on the same side as you drive on the road?
I bump into Americans at corridor corners after forgetting to walk on the right… …followed by a side-step-dance as we try unsuccessfully to bypass each other…
a walk on the wrong side
Stairwells too.
Haha! Yes, this is something I also noticed when I first came to the US. I’ve pretty much changed my behaviour and walk down the right-hand side of the hallway now. Raymond makes an interesting point too: are most stairways in the US on the right, spiraling counter-clockwise? The few I can remember walking up in South Africa were on the left and spiraled clockwise.
I tend to walk on the right most of the time. In fact, I’ve seen signs on escalators/moving sidewalks that say “stand on right; walk on left” (so people can pass you if you’re moving too slowly! Even though I stick to the right, I still have lots of near-collisions at work. [Perhaps with Britons? ]
I do try to observe traffic directions while walking. I think the deal with corridors and turning corners though, is just that most people are a little lazy about it. I don’t think it is at all uncommon for two Americans to wind up doing the zig-zag dance you describe. For some reason zig-zags in corridors don’t aggravate me nearly as much as zig-zags in stairwells do.