Sunday 17 October 2010

Lift Etiquette

 or  

A Guide to Eloquent Elevator Usage

  1. Above all else, allow passengers who have just finished their short journey to alight first. This is only good manners and will lead to lower levels of stress amongst all. Fighting one's way out of a lift is a ludicrous action to have to perform on a daily basis. Imagine a world where you know that a clear path awaits you when you get to the ground floor. The self-gratification when reciprocating this act for others should be equally rewarding. In addition, when there are fewer obstructions, the lift's progress will surely be expedited. Those of you who prefer to go barging your way into lifts full of people who are trying to get out are only slowing down everyone's day with your belligerence – including your own, which must defeat your ostensible purpose.

  1. When calling a lift, press only the button that meets your need. Pressing both the up and down button concurrently is a road to nowhere. Even on the USS Enterprise, no one ever manages to beam up and down at the same time. Again, by doing this, you are only slowing down the lift by adding unnecessary tasks to its list of things to do. There is also a 50% percent chance of slowing down your own journey by making the lift take you up before you go down, stopping again on your own floor to pick up nobody on the way.

  1. Only press the button once. Now, I must admit, that I've never been presented with evidence to support this one. However, when I see people bashing away at the buttons, I think, this can't be good for the lift. Perhaps there is evidence, in that said lifts are so often out of order. I think we can safely say that bashing equipment (except tube television sets on their last legs and automobiles suffering from certain problems) does not produce the desired effect. If your computer crashes, you don't suddenly start repeated bashing of the keys, do you? Well, perhaps you do, but in that case there is even less hope for you.

  1. If there is a separate lift for goods and service, don't use it! Yet again, you are only adding to lift congestion by doing so. How? By summoning two sets of lifts at the same and therefore sending one on a fool's errand. If people carrying goods or providing service all stick to their lifts, and everyone else sticks to the other ones, both sets of lifts could presumably go doubly as fast as they would when being misused. There are exceptions for this rule. When one set of lifts is out of order, naturally you have no choice but to use the other one. Also, if the other one is waiting at the floor where you are about to start your lift journey before you have summoned your designated lift, then you will not be creating congestion by using it. This can work both ways, but construction workers bearing equipment and those carrying other heavy loads should always prefer the service lift.

In my work, I once came across a text informing me that in Japan the rear left portion of the lift is prime real estate and should be reserved for the most important person in the lift – if you are the most important person, you should wait to be directed there and profusely refuse this honor bestowed upon you, before accepting it. I don't know whether this factoid is really true or not (I'm afraid that if I research its veracity, I will be let down by what I find), but I do know that the four tips above which I have just shared with you will improve everyone's quality of lift if they become the accepted way of doing things.

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