[I wrote this inspired by a recent thread in The Pit. The local paper didn’t publish it, so I’m seeing fit to inflict it on you poor folks, being vaguely SDMB-related. Anything for an audience.]
Congratulations on the purchase of your new Jerk-o-matic™ elevator system! Our company has had some ups and downs lately so we’re especially glad of your business.
Familiarity with some simple operating principles will get you moving in no time. Mind the doors.
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the floors are now in strict numerical order. You can now actually tell when the elevator is nearing your floor and move to the front before the doors open, unless you are so taken with our new interior designs that you’d like to spend as much time inside them as possible.
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the numbered buttons light up with all the floors to be visited. If your stop is not next you are allowed to move to the rear of the car; others will not think the less of you for this weakness.
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there are two sets of these buttons in the lift. When entering you don’t need to stand in the doorway waiting for the person in front of you to make a choice; instead you can use the other set. They are fully operational.
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holding the doors open for yet one more person to enter the lift helps them but inconveniences the ten people already in the lift, plus those waiting for it to arrive on other floors. Overall waiting times will be reduced if you don’t do this, shame though it is to have less time to admire our unique interior decoration scheme.
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similarly, standing in front of the doors and allowing the female, the weak, and the elderly to struggle forward through the crowd from the rear doesn’t do them any favours either.
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we have not removed your old stairways. Your management were too tight-fisted to install as many lift-shafts as we recommended so the stairs will often be faster. Feel free to use them for your inter-floor journeys where appropriate for your fitness level.
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once the call button is lit, your need for transport has been registered. After some unfortunate incidents at the early design stages we removed the facility where the more often you press the button, the faster the lift will arrive. The test staff are recovering nicely.
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when a car arrives at a floor the direction of its future travel is indicated by an arrow outside the lift. Asking the occupants whether they are going down is likely to elicit smart-alec comments such as “no, we’re still, you must be going up”. We realise that putting the directional arrows over the doors is counter-intuitive and inconvenient when you are standing under them, but that’s where elevator tradition says they are to be placed and who are we to argue?
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feel free to ogle other passengers in the dimly mirrored walls we have fitted by thoughtful request of your management. Indirect staring of this sort is undetectable and does not constitute any sort of harassment. Meeting another passenger’s eyes, however, is a gaucherie on par with being caught picking your nose in your car. Or indeed in one of our cars.
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extended rides (usually caused by failure of other passengers to implement these simple usage guidelines, and in no way a reflection on our advanced Where-The-Elevator™ technology) are an ideal time to check the shine on your shoes or the innovative finish of our ceiling. This is why most of your fellow passengers adopt neck-cricking postures not seen elsewhere in modern life.
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we apologise for the lack of the justly-famous, much-loved elevator-music. Again, your parsimonious management must bear the blame, so please direct your complaints to them.
Smooth riding and happy standing!