Button Pushers - A rant

You know those big round buttons near doors?  They usually have a wheelchair on them and 'push' written on them.  They seem to have proliferated in my years outside of Canada so that now they are on doors of all types.  They are, I'm sure, a huge boon to people with any kind of physical impediment to entering and exiting through heavy doors.  These impediments might range from a disability to carrying heavy bags of groceries.  Parents with strollers, I am sure, love them.

Okay, benefits of the buttons is now established.

So why is everyone else using them?  Seriously.  Why does the guy exiting the building in front of me push the button and wait for the door to open for him?  He's probably 30 (at most), fit and heading off to work.  But he still pushes that button.  Why does the young woman use her fob to unlock the door and then push the button and stand there waiting for it to open?

The other day I finished working out and was in a bit of a rush, and the guy ahead of me (who had also just finished working out) pushed the button and we both had to stand there waiting for the door to open.  I almost ran into him because I was walking fast behind him.  I almost wish I had run into him so that I could have said, "Ooops, sorry, I thought you were going THROUGH the door."

The only reason I can think of (and I could be completely wrong) for so many people to be pushing the buttons is the generalized germophobia we all seem to be feeling.  When I asked a friend recently why she chose to push the button, that was her answer - "Germs!"  But that doesn't make any sense when you think about it.  Door or button, they have both been pawed by countless numbers of hands.  I usually open doors either with the back of my hand or my sleeve, but the big round buttons seem like they would be harder to do that with because of their placement height.  That is, they would be harder to avoid 'germy' contact with.

So what gives?  What's driving people unencumbered by injury, disability, children, or packages to stop opening doors under their own power?  Is it the feeling of control (though we are far more in control if we are actually opening the doors themselves)?  Is it laziness?  What gives???