Take me higher …. or maybe lower

Elevators, wow what an invention! Zoom up and down super size buildings in no time with absolutely no sweat! I used to visit malls in Bangalore just to use lifts, well that was till escalators started showing up everywhere.

psst .. travelators are my new favorite, i mean how super cool are they !!

Well as awesome as they are, the people using it tend to be more oblivious to the way they work! This has been something that i’ve wanted to write about for quite some time but today after what happened at office I just wanted to let go and write it! I find new peace through blog writing, good or not I have fun! Coming back to the topic, you may ask what incidents, well here goes!

Three common misconceptions by elevator users:

1. Hit the buttons super hard and continuously to make the elevator teleport from any floor to the one you are on almost instantaneously.

2. You tell the elevator which way it has to travel, that is why you have two buttons on the floor, one for going up and the other for going down

3. Doesn’t matter which arrow is showing on the elevator display[awesome at some places] you just get onto it and start jabbering

Well the first one, come on all of you have done it at least once, havent you ? Well if you havent, awesome you just missed on some awesome childhood glory where you could have felt that it was the force that lie in your magical fingers that got the elevator to show up super quick. I’ve seen people come with two fingers pointing and hitting the buttons repeatedly as if they were caught up in a super charged link with the buttons and couldn’t let go.

Tik tik tiki takakakaka tak tikkki tak tadaak

yeah that is the sound alright! oh oh, yes they are on the phone too! Well super awesome idiots even if elevators worked that way do you think there are no other idiots like you on other floors thrashing the buttons like you?

Coming to the second, below is an actual conversation that happened sometime back between me and a super close friend of mine, well lets call her Stacy(I like that name, no offense I love the real name but I dont want to embarrass her), so yeah Stacy and me had this conversation

Lift was on the 4th floor(I dont actually remember which floor) and we were on the 2nd floor of some building

Stacy went ahead and pressed the down button although we had to go to the 3rd floor, I was shocked, asked her

Me : “umm do you know what you are doing? We need to go to the 3rd floor. ”

Stacy : “Yeah i know, that is why i asked the elevator to come down from 4th to 2nd!”

Me: “Sorry ?”

Stacy: “The elevator has to come down right? So I pressed the down button!”

Me: (Facepalm and almost died of laughter ) “Holy smokes!!!! Did no one ever tell you how this works?”

So fact time: the people who made the elevators were smart enough to detect which direction they lift should move to service the request it received! They sort of figured there would be people who would press the down button while at the basement and people who would press the up button while on the top most floor. Any idea what would happen if elevators depended on our tiny little brain’s amazing thoughts to choose direction ?  😉

Finally, this one is a classic and what made me write this article! This happened today[6 May, 2012] at Brigade Gateway, yep I went to work on a Sunday purely out of choice and yes I’m showing off that I work at an office in Brigade Gateway 😀 So I walk into the MLCP building and head towards the elevator and I see a huge crowd, thanks to Orion mall there are so many people who use the elevator to go to the lower basement where their vehicles are parked. If it were the good old days we wouldn’t have had MLCP or people using the elevator to go down one level. We have become lazy haven’t we? Anyhoo, so a huge crowd and I hit the up button as I had to go to the 3rd floor where my ride was waiting for me, a happy couple get into the lift with me(yep you guessed right the lift was moving upwards!) and they were all romancing and hit LB and I hit 3rd floor. The complex has a elevator attendant at all times in the lift, he asked this guy why he pressed LB when the lift was moving upwards, that guy replies

Oh, maine socha tha ki yeh neeche jayega kyunki maine LB dabaya. The door had almost closed, this guy hits open and gets out.

[My mind voice] Abe gadhe ullo, elevator ka display nahi dekh sakta kya ?

This was a mistake ? Well too many examples to prove your thoughts wrong, i’ve seen people get into elevators regardless of the direction its going in. They just enter and hit whichever floor they want! So if a guy is on the 3rd floor and wants to go to the 1st floor he will still get into a lift moving up and he will hit 1st floor. He has no issues travelling up and then moving down to where he wants to end up, but he absolutely hates waiting for the lift to come down again!

I have a petition to the government, please include a 3 page chapter in every 1st standard textbook on how to use elevators! We don’t want people to be using the wrong elevators and reaching hell instead of heaven and vice versa 😛

*Peace out*