Monday, January 30, 2012

Elevator Etiqutte

I'm not the biggest fan of elevators and prefer to take the stairs when possible. On the rare occasions when I do ride, I wish that my fellow elevator commuters would follow these simple social niceities:

Elevator Etiquette Tip 1: Shower
The public elevators at work smell like a combination of B.O., cigarette smoke, and other foul things that I can't identify but that smell like death. These smells are present even when I'm the only passenger. People are smelly and their stank remains, probably forever, in the elevator. I avoid the public elevators at work like the plague, because I could probably get the black plague in there... Also, I have a pretty active gag reflex, and I don't need my vomit mixing with the other nasty odors.

Elevator Etiquette Tip 2: Personal Space
20 people already packed into the elevator at 5 on the dot? Of course there's room for you...on the next elevator. Waiting 30 seconds for the next elevator will not kill you and will make the 'sardines' in the elevator happy too.

Elevator Etiquette Tip 3: Get off in the Reverse Order you got on
When you are headed to the same destination, its polite to allow those on last (and thus nearest to the doors) to get off first. There doesn't need to be pushing. In fact, I think its a design flaw that elevators don't automatically plunge towards the Earth Tower of Terror-style when the people in the back push other people in their rush to get out of the elevator.

Elevator Etiquette Tip 4: Holding the Doors:

This is a lose-lose situation. Choose who you want to offend carefully: the person you are already in the elevator with, or the person you want to hold the door for.

At work, there are two staff elevators encased in a glass area for security purposes. I always seem to end up in an elevator with the person who sees someone coming in from the parking lot, who is a good fifty yards away, and decides to hold the elevator for them.

Sometimes they ask, "do you mind?" But even though I do mind, its not like I can say anything because if I did tell them that I minded and they stopped holding the doors closed, then I'd be trapped in a small enclosed space with this individual and who knows what kind of punishment would be inflicted on me? (Ok, ok, it would probably just be awkward silence, but that's worse than waiting, so I keep my mouth shut.)

I'm the kind of person who is willing to hold the elevator if the person is walking into the glass enclosure, any farther away than that and they will just have to wait. Obviously, patience is not a virtue I possess, but just think of my not waiting for them as teaching others patience (because they have to wait for the next elevator. ha ha).

Elevator Etiquette Tip 5: Do NOT ever 'let one rip'
I don't think that I've ever been in an elevator when someone decided to 'let one rip' (although in the smelly public elevators, it is entirely possible that it did occur without being noticed).

One day a fellow employee got stuck in an elevator for about an hour, with a few juvenile delinquents. He came back to work and we were all feeling sorry for him for having to endure that experince. This sympathy quickly ended when he informed us that he had turned the elevator into a 'gas chamber.' Even though the kids were delinquents, surely they didn't deserve that.

Elevator Sidenote:
While standing in line for the Tower of Terror ride last year at Disneyland I overheard this little boy explaining to his friend about the ride. He knew he was saying the world 'elevator' wrong, but kept saying it as "Evalator' it was so funny!

No comments:

Post a Comment