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by camtarn 626 days ago
Holding the door for people is so ingrained as a polite thing to do. You really have to tell people not to allow others to tailgate - or install turnstiles/gates that make it impossible. I suspect this would be particularly bad in an office with a hundred people or so - small enough that you're at least slightly familiar with most of the faces, but large enough that you wouldn't necessarily know if somebody got fired. If they're wearing their no-longer-valid badge and acting like they're meant to be there, I can't see many people stopping them.
2 comments

I don’t want to sound like I’m disagreeing with you because you’re right; just an amusing anecdote from my past:

I worked at a place that stressed this at company meetings - “no holding doors, if someone says they forgot their badge don’t let them in etc”

At one meeting the CEO got up and talked and praised one of the employees because they actually did this to him, the CEO; shut the door in his face made him walk back to his car to get his badge. Was very funny to see a place actually walk the talk on this.

Overall though of course you’re right. People are going to be nice and you can’t stop it.

It’s not realistic to expect individual workers to slam the door in the face of someone walking behind them.

Companies that want to prevent tailgating need to spend the money on mantraps or other infrastructure that is clearly designed to allow one person through at a time.