~~~ in high traffic areas.

Though I have no idea how that pull was attached to the door and if the door was wood or metal and if screws, bolts or bolts and nuts were used; in the case of just screws or bolts without nuts, either are nothing but a wedge and constant pulling and retightening can easilly strip a wooden hole of its holding power where wooden plugs can easilly no longer serve their purpose and that wobbly pull can and does fall off into someone's hand becomes common to the point where another mounting method is used. Also, the expression to "fall of in one's hand" can easilly mean that the door pull was at the point of almost dangling and would have fallen off completely if someone wasn't actually holding it. Wobbly door pulls are very, very common on doors in high traffic areas and are usually attended to, quickly.

I just sold a house where I had the door pull that fell off in my hands in 1973, at the Hilton Inn on Singer Island that I had admired for months prior. I took the pull to the front desk where Paul Huff had told me I can have it because he was fixing to replace the pull as soon as he was repairing a wooden table leg in the office behind the desk.... What are the odds of that happening...? There was also a hanging lamp over the door area which I thought needed to be replaced as well. The new owners of the house discarded the door pull which was attached to the gate and the hanging lamp remains.

It happens, for sure.