Ups and downs of elevators.

Ok, I just need to rant about this one. What is it about people that they just cannot get elevators? They go up and down. You push the button and then wait. If the light is lit then someone else has pushed the button, so leave it alone and wait!

I work in a public building and have to ride the elevator to go to employees desks to fix their computers. I tend to have to ride them quite a bit. It amazes me that people do not know how they work.

Every elevator I have ever been on works the same way. You push the button and then if an elevator is not busy, it will come to the floor that you are on and you ride it to where you want to go. If all the elevators are busy, then the next time one of them pass the floor you are on, going in the direction that you want to go, it will stop and pick you up. If the elevator is going up, the bell usually sounds once, an arrow pointing up lights up to indicate that the elevator is going in that direction. If the elevator is going down, the bell rings twice, an arrow pointing down lights up, sometimes in a different color then the up arrow and that indicates the elevator is going in the down direction. Some elevators even have an announcement as to the floor that you are on and where the elevator is going next. "Second floor, going down." Many times there is a display in the elevator indicating where the elevator is going next, some kind of up and down arrow system. It seems a pretty simple system right?

Why is it that there is a significant portion of the population that cannot figure out this system? Every day I deal with at least one of the following issues:

The button pusher

-- This person seems to believe that the buttons for the elevator both inside and out are part of some elaborate video game system and that if they push them fast enough that the elevator will move faster. They must be hooked on the 80's video game Track and Field. The elevators in our building are older. Many times if you repeatedly hit the buttons, it will cancel all of the ones that have been pushed. For most people in the elevator this is not a problem as they the button pusher is usually going to the top floor to get lunch or to the lobby to leave the building. I however have a problem. My desk is in the basement. There is only one elevator in the whole building that will go there and it is one floor below the lobby. If I don't camp out by the panel and catch the reset then I end up having to ride, usually, back up to the top floor before getting another chance to try to make it to the basement. Button pusher is worse then a typical man with the remote however and pushes everyone out of the way so they can get to buttons to push them faster. They are in control and no one is going to change that.

The Non-Attendant

-- This person wouldn't be so bad if they were helpful at all. However this person will stand in front of the buttons and not move until they get to their floor. You have to risk a battery charge in order to push the button for the floor you want. In a thirty story office building, I could see this as having some legitimacy. In a four story county building, one or two stops is no big deal.

The Safe in Airplanes

-- If the world were a cartoon, these people would never be hurt in an airplane. They have no clue where the ground is. Now I will be the first to admit that the building can be somewhat confusing when it comes to what is on what floor. In one half of the building the floors go:

L = Lobby and Street Level
C = Court Floor
1 = First Floor
2 = Second Floor

In the other half they are:
1 = First Floor
2 = Second Floor
3 = Third Floor
4 = Fourth Floor

In both halves, the first and second floors are the first and second floors. So I get there might be some confusion if it were not for one fact. In all the elevators I've seen, the ground floor is marked with a star or other special symbol. I cannot tell you how many times someone gets on the elevator, pushes the 1 button and then gets UPSET that it is not where they thought it was going. I've stopped wearing my badge openly because they would yell at me for the building being so confusing. I'm sorry I didn't think to remember where you parked.

The Directionless

-- OK, When I said that there was only 4 floors in each half of the building, that wasn't quite true. One elevator out of the eight elevators in the building goes to 5 floors. That is the one that also goes to the basement. If in riding down someone else stops at the Lobby, it is inevitable that someone that is going up will get on the elevator. Now I have "gone for the ride" before myself. Getting on an elevator that is going the wrong direction just to get going. That doesn't bother me. It's when they look surprised and astonished when the elevator starts going down that gets me. Remember now, there is a audible signal with the two bell rings, there is a visual signal in that there is a red arrow that points down that lights up on the outside of the elevator, there is a display on the inside of the elevator that indicates that the elevator is going down, and there is a verbal announcement that sounds off when the doors open that says "Lobby and Street level, going down." After all of this, they have the nerve to be surprised and upset that the elevator is not going in the direction they want. Maybe if they push the buttons faster it will turn the car around. Or even worse is the person that on the top floor, with only a open skylight above them, will ask someone in the elevator if it is going down. No this is Willy Wonka's great glass elevator and we are going through the roof.

The Sadistic

-- If you have been smoking, drinking or eating before you get on the elevator, PLEASE, do not try to make small talk when you get on the elevator. The smell will linger for about two hours. I swear that the elevator car drags that smell up and down the shaft for the "delight" of all riders. We don't call the cafe the "Commissary of last resort" for nothing.

There are others that come to mind when thinking about riding the elevator. The gentleman that wondered out loud if the medical marijuana card that he carried could get him out of the DUI charge he was currently facing. The young man that was having difficulties getting his "hommie" to understand that he was going to be sent to jail and needed one message relayed to his old woman and another to his girlfriend. The pleasant smelling homeless person that apparently fell asleep in the elevator. I didn't see that one but the elevator smelled uncommonly rotten for most of that day. However those are fodder for another post on another day.

Thanks for listening!