Shut the doors!

It's cold out there - but the shops are still blasting hot air through their open doors.

A year ago, I wrote about my campaign to persuade shops to cease warming the cold streets in winter, and posed outside this shop, in the week before Christmas, with shorts on.

Take my word for it that the temperature that day was just above freezing.

Wandering through the same part of London today, I noticed that my efforts had produced precisely zero effect.

This didn't altogether surprise me. And getting in a sulk was not going to help. So I walked cheerfully into each shop and carefully shut the doors behind me, then smiled as the miserable, freezing staff - following orders from the top, presumably - discreetly opened them up again.

Try doing this yourself, and do report back if you have any more success than I did.

Comments

[Mekhong Kurt]

This sort of practice has amazed me all my life.

Yes, studies the world over have shown that potential customers are more likely to enter a business with its doors open -- but if *all* businesses kept their doors closed, then presumably customers would enter anyway, no longer enticed, perhaps subconsciously, by an open door.

We also should remember that we, the consumers, are the ones ultimate footing the bill for this stupid excess. And when I'm paying the freight, I have a right to object to wastefulness of *my* money.

Raise cane with managers and owners. And boycott businesses that refuse to cooperate.

I do both, regularly.

[Nick]

Had to pop into Carphone Warehouse this morning. I was struck by the fact that the door was wedged open and hot air was blasting out from a heater in the ceiling. I asked the person who served me about this. She said it's policy and that it's been proved that more people walk through their doors if they keep them open. What madness!

[John-Paul Flintoff]

I may well be an idiot, and by some people's standards I have a lot of time on my hands. (I could do with more.) Perhaps I should have added this information to my post:

According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, retailers use 275 kilowatt hours (kWh) per square metre.

That’s vastly more than, say, local government offices (39kWh), factories (47kWh), warehouses (81kWh) and commercial offices (95kWh).

One explanation for the waste is lighting: many stores are lit to the same intensity as television studios. And now to heaters, the craziest of which must surely be the ones installed over the open front door, which typically have a rating of 500 kilowatts — roughly 17 times as powerful as a domestic fan heater.

[lucia]

To Charlie - I think that you miss the point here. Why waste energy heating the pavement? Patio heaters have come under scrutiny for the very same reason. This is long been a bee in my bonnet. Are there any representatives of high street stores out there who can tell us why this is such common practise?

[Charlie Stout]

You are an idiot with too much time on your hands.