Elevators

I work in a building with 20 floors, and unless I feel like walking up the 18 flights to my floor, I get to ride an elevator. To answer the inevitable, yes, I've walked up the stairs many times. Not a big deal. But dealing with elevators for many years, I've gotten to observe how people act around them, and it really is an odd thing how people act with elevators.

Start with the basics. To call an elevator, you walk up to the button and press the direction you want to go: up or down. If you're on the first floor, there is one choice. In fact, most people will push down from my floor because there is rarely any reason to go up to 20 (when I have done, I just take the stairs; it's quicker). Anyway, just like when children want to do something, there is this odd competition that goes on for who presses the elevator button. I don't even know if they realize they're doing it, but it happens.

I'll be walking up to the button, being the first one to approach it when someone else appears. Seeing that I am going for the button on the left side of the hall, they'll make a high speed beeline for the button on the right. We're on the first floor. Which direction am I going to push that doesn't work out with their plans? Maybe they are the type to call "First!" on YouTube videos. I don't know. I'm three inches to their three feet from the button, so I continue my prearrange trajectory and push the button. As soon as the light goes on, they put on the brakes and pull their hand back like it was a huge shock that I was doing exactly the same thing they were.

So we wait forever for an elevator even though it is 6:30am and there is almost no one in the building. That's another rule, though. Even though there are five elevators that express from floor 1 to 11 and go from 11 to 20, only 2 or 3 of them work at any given time. They appear to have a minimum wait time as well because you can almost never press the button and have the doors immediately open. No, you have to begin your awkward elevator journey nodding at the guy who's either still upset because you pushed the button first or can't figure out how his telekinetic ability worked to make the light come on before he touched it. After the minimum 30 to 60 second wait, the doors open, and you do a last minute check to ensure you commit no social taboos and get on before someone who should get on before you.

You see, while women's lib has been embraced by the world and the sexes are supposedly equal now, God forbid you commit the social crime of forgetting the rule of "ladies first" or at least persons of the female gender (in cases where you're clearly not dealing with a lady, if you follow me) first. If there is any rule left over from the old days of chivalry that women don't mind clinging to, it's "me first." Everything else can fall by the wayside, but you must let her go in first even if you're standing next to the door, and she's wandered to the other end of the waiting area (you know, because she wanted to push the button, and she's sulking).

But wait, before you go in the elevator, you notice there's already someone in there. There is a sort of elevator etiquette that not everyone knows about, and I hope you'll remember. Everyone in the elevator gets to come out first, and then new riders can get on. Hopefully, you can see the logic behind this. Some people don't. I've been pushed aside (literally) for someone to get on before I got off before, and I wondered what their hurry was since they aren't going anywhere before I get off. Maybe they were afraid I'd push their floor button before I got off.

So, you're finally in the elevator, but there's yet another problem. There is this odd mindset (probably related to the minimum elevator wait rule) that this elevator is the last elevator in the world and it's never coming back. If someone misses this elevator, it's the stairs for them. The only time you will see overweight chap with no arms on his office chair for a very good reason run full tilt is when the elevator door is open, and he thinks he'll miss it. God forbid you have to stand and wait for the next one because then you have that awkward moment when two people missed the last elevator in the world and have the fight over who gets to push the button to call the next one. In addition, the people in the elevator believe this as well because they'll hold that elevator door until the alarm goes off to allow someone to catch it.

This creates another awkward moment if you happen to be the small percentage that knows that you can just call another elevator when this one leaves because someone going into the lift sees you coming. They decide to hold the door for you, and you notice. What do you do now? You were walking along at a leisurely pace not caring for anything in the world except getting to that call button first, and suddenly, you're deprived of your button and now have someone holding the door for you. To show that you care about their time, you have no choice now but to take up a jog that honestly goes no faster than you were walking to begin with. You can't run because the security guy will look at you funny (because people look funny when they run).

Once inside the elevator, you waive and smile at the worried face running to the closing doors with a shrug because that open doors button is a farce and doesn't work anyway, and I'm sure not sticking my hand in the closing doors. Those sensors don't always work (I've seen Final Destination 2). Now, you're riding up with two people from different floors who are pissed off at you because you got to the up button first. You stand in awkward silence ensuring you don't break the rule of "Don't you dare talk to me. I don't know you and can defend myself." The three of you stand as far away from each other as possible in the small closet-sized space waiting patiently for someone to get out so the other two of us can have more space.

We reach 11 and the guy gets off. Oh, super awkward now. The doors close and she moves to the opposite side of the lift and tries to squeeze into the cracks into the wall since anyone who would deprive a defenseless woman of her button pressing right is creep material, and she's going all the way to 20. But now there's another problem.

You know, elevators are there to make life easier. I get it. But I only take them because opening my day with  432 steps from ground floor to 18 (Yes, I know how many steps there are. Why? Is that weird?) is not fun. So we stop at floor 14. Some guy who looks like an image of fitness walks onto the elevator and presses...15. Really? You interrupted our awkward elevator moment to come in and go up one floor. I could sleep walk up one floor. Rock Girl could walk up one floor without hurting hers-... wait, no she should take the elevator. Anyway, in a moment of mutual disdain, my fellow rider at I glare at this guy who stands three inches from the door trying to avoid the heat of our gazes behind him as he rides up one floor knowing he was wrong and regretting his button pushing obsessions. He all but runs out, and I have three floors left to look anywhere but at my fellow rider.

Before I know it, I'm at my floor and can't even see the woman flip me the bird as I stroll happily on solid floor again instead of that tiny closet that could plummet me to my death at any moment. In between happy dance steps, I ponder taking the stairs and avoiding all those awkward moments and button competitions, but then I remember the landing incident where I was going down, a woman was exiting the floor, and another woman was coming up, and we stood there staring, wondering who should go first. At least in an elevator, we could have just avoided eye contact.