Local Voices: Resident Sounds Off on Elevator Etiquette

I have the luxury of shooting all the way to the top of the building via elevator each morning. I love it because having an elevator means I don’t have to trudge up 17 flights of stairs. Color me "pro-elevator." If I had to climb 17 flights of stairs to get to work I’d probably just quit.

I’m as interested in appropriate elevator interaction as the next fellow, but lately I'm finding it hard to completely ignore the fact that I’m sharing 16-square-feet of floor space with five strangers and, as we all know, that is the key to successfully navigating an elevator - pretending no one exists but you.

I’ve made all sorts of mistakes like looking people dead in the eye, hitting the wrong button and (blatantly) getting off on the wrong floor. All big no-nos.

Just last week I got off on 16 by mistake (I was thinking about dinosaurs), then back on the next elevator to go up to 17. Literally everybody in the elevator audibly sighed when I hit the button. Sorry to waste your 12 seconds, jerks! 

Is your time really THAT valuable? In this economy you're lucky I didn't use the focused face-to-face time to panhandle phone cards or something so, give me a break.

I may make the occasional faux-pas, but I’m never just plain elevator-rude. I don’t, for instance, blatantly pick my nose (thanks for the poorly executed “roundabout” between floors 12 and 14 Lady in a Green Jacket, on Tuesday).

Lady - no matter how fast you cram your finger in your nose and back out again – it still counts! And the question remains: What kind of nose situation is so horrible that it couldn’t wait 38 seconds? More importantly - did you use your pinky finger to select your floor? I bet you didn't and now, because of you and your proliferation of MERSA, I refuse to get on Elevator #3.

Being the guy who calls for an elevator, then refuses to get on it has won me no friends so, thanks for that.

I also don’t wink and change into gym shorts between floors. (Thank you Mr. Tall Asian Guy in Basketball Shoes). For a split second I thought I was going to have to fight off an amorous suitor. Thanks for making me wonder, then feel dejected that I wasn't good-looking enough, then weird for feeling dejected.

Hearing the totally unprovoked stranger behind you on an elevator drop his pants  is just plain unsettling.  If you don’t have enough alone time built into your day to change your pants solo - at least have the courtesy to change 'em somewhere VERY public instead of with just me. What if you miscalculated and the door opened? There I am in an elevator with a half-naked stranger. "Click" goes the camera phone. "Pop" goes my future political career.

My personal favorite is the loud phone talker who got on with me; then proceeded to loudly coordinate drinks with her girlfriend all the way to the ground floor, hang up, broadcast, “Ok. I’m that girl. I know it’s so rude to talk in an elevator,” and stomp off. By the time she waddled out of the elevator I was the one who needed a drink.

Let me point out that saying something is rude, while you’re doing it, actually doesn’t make it less rude. It just proves that you’re an insufferable twirp and I hope a big eagle swoops down and eats you.

Interesting stuff, I know; but what I really want to talk about is this: the door-close-button. IT DOESN’T CLOSE THE @#$#@$ DOOR.

I’m 31-years-old and in that entire time I have never, not one time, period, ever seen the door-close-button work the door faster than normal, yet as soon as someone pops through the not-yet-fully-opened door, there is instantly a logjam of grimy pointer fingers miserably scrabbling to get that button pushed.

It's already a computerized automatic door. What is faster than a computerzed automatic door?!

You?

Really? 

Augh!!! Is there a place in the world where the hurry-up-and-close-the-door button works and everybody else in the world has been there but me???

Am I dead? Is this Hell? I need to go to that happy place because the unwavering faith which led me to unyieldingly engage that button for the first 28 years of my life nearly drove me mad.

My New Years’ resolution in 2008 was to never push that devil-spawned button again and by God I haven’t. 

But it kills me.