I work on the fifteen floor of a building that has way too few elevators. (Buiilt in the mid-19th century, and retrofitted disastrously.) So every car is packed and takes about five minutes to arrive. When we’re almost at the bottom, typically after stops on 15, 13, 12, 10, 9, 8, 5, and 4, the elevator stops on 2 or 3 (or often both) to admit someone (typically a young and healthy looking student) who needs to cram himself or herself into the car, while I’m thinking “Got a broken leg, you lazy entitled jackass?”
Who the fuck decided that it was verboten to get into public debates about such rude, stupid, selfish behavior? I don’t argue, or abuse them, but I would if it wouldn’t make me look like a middle-aged Good Old Days kind of person. Christ, it pisses me off when people on the first floor do the same thing to get to 2, but how freaking lazy do you have to be to be willing to wait five minutes, so you can avoid the onerous task of walking DOWN a flight of stairs?
Unless the lift is a ‘pass only’ type lift, like they used to have in my university library then they’re entitled to use it. But I agree that if they’re only going down a floor, then they are being a bit lazy.
Of course, they’re entitled to use it, in the sense that there are no regulations against the DOWN elevator being used by a would-be passenger entering on the 2nd floor. But, I may add that “entitled” cuts both ways–they’re also lazy slobs, plus which they’re selfish and self-centered, they presume that the planet revolves around their personal convenience, they’re clueless about the desires of the people already on the elevator whose lives would eased by their showing the simple and decent consideration of walking down a flight of stairs, and they are to be condemned morally by every right thinking person on this website. I beseech you to join me in denouncing them!
Bookbags can get very heavy and trudging up and down stairs with them can be more than some (not all) students can comfortably handle balance-wise. Plus enclosed buildings stairwells are often not comfortable places for women to be by themselves even for one flight.
Also there’s just something special about riding an elevator that people like. You push a button and it goes up and down. That’s just plain fun.
I used to work on the top floor of a ten-storey building. This happened all the time. On the downward journey, people always got on on the second floor (first floor, to Europeans). The company I worked for occupied the top three storeys, and nearly everybody used the stairs if they were just going up or down one floor. Many of us used the stairs up and down for two-floor trips. It just wasn’t worth waiting for the lift.
Our situation was unique in the building. We had key cards that opened the stairway doors on our levels. Occupants of other floors didn’t. While it was a little irksome for someone to get on in the lobby and go up one floor, they didn’t have a choice. They couldn’t get through the stairway door. But going down? Anyone could use the stairs to go down. (Boy, those fire drills were fun from the ‘Penthouse’.) I noticed time and time again that healthy-appearing people waited much longer for the lift than it would have taken them to simply take the stairs one floor down to the lobby.
To look at me, to see me move on level ground, you’d never know I have a problem. But stairs are killers, both up and down.
Yes, I realize most of the people doing this are being lazy. But I don’t doubt that a few of them are taking the elevator because the stairs are a painful and difficult route for them.
If you ever do lose it and bitch at someone for this, you’re bound to get the one who does have a legitimate reason for using the elevator.
Yup, and there are more of us “young and healthy” Appearing people than you’d realize. I can easily bound UP a flight of stairs, but going down puts my broken leg (since healed with bolts and a nice platinum plate) into too painful of an angle even on a good day.
And of course that’s NOT to say that some or many aren’t just yeah, being lazy, but as someone else said, with a backpack full of books or just merely at the end of a long day, going up that flight of stairs just that ONE more time…
The ones that bug me aren’t so much the ones that get on at the second floor, but the IDIOTS who try to get on blocking those who are trying to get off of the elevator.
On the other hand, Mireille Guiliamo is in her fifties and likes to take the stairs UP to her fifteenth-story apartment, just for exercise and bien-etre. Why not you too?
Look, SHE is entirely sincere about it. I’m just the messenger.
DURrr, not platinum, titanium…(and that’s if I remember what the doc said correctly)…sheesh, that’s what I get for having home shopping on in the background…
That’s the response I was looking for. Three knee operations have left me with a normal appearing stride, even the ability to run short distances, play half-court basketball, ride a bike for long distances, ice skate…I can even CLIMB stairs fairly comfortably, but if I have to walk down a flight of stairs, I suddenly turn into Walter Brennan. I ride escalators down, and take stairs up. I’d be the one pressing the down button on 2 and if you popped off at me, I’d probably get violent.
Count to 10, and your blessings that it’s not you in that position. Unless it’s just some lazy bitch in which case a silent prayer that they walk into a manhole seems sufficient.
Heh heh, do you do the “toddler learning stairs” stride too? That is, left foot down, right comes to meet it, left foot down, right to meet it…etc too?
Looks ridiculous, but on a bad day, all I can manage. We have an elevator to the second floor of the 2 story gym where I work, but the thing is SO ancient, that I’d rather do my stupid looking toddler stair walk than take that darn thing.
I sometimes WISH someone would do the “is your leg broken” snide remark, so that I can pull up my pantleg, show them my little Frankenstein ankle and say “yup, as a matter of fact it’s been SHATTERED, okay with you if I take it easy this once since I’ve alREADY been up the flights of stairs all day long now?”
I do that…I am a bit shakey from the back damage, combined with some old knee damage. The knee gives me the grippe going up stairs, and I am troubled by possibly falling going down the stairs because of the back. I love up excalators=) but have to take the elevator down at the mall, but I have a phobia about down escalators because when I was 5 I fell down the multifloor down escalator at the Tampa airport…
Frankly, unless you’re in a wheelchair, using a cane or crutches or on a mobility scooter, using the elevator to go DOWN any number of flights of stairs strikes me as absurdly lazy.
]quote]Frankly, unless you’re in a wheelchair, using a cane or crutches or on a mobility scooter, using the elevator to go DOWN any number of flights of stairs strikes me as absurdly lazy.
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I have two bad knees and going down stairs is much more painful than going up (which also hurts but not as badly). Yesterday in fact I was going down the subway stairs when a bolt of pain knifed through my knee, making me gasp loudly enough that people turned around to see what the problem was. I had to stop and wait for the pain to subside so that I could move, and then take the remaining stairs one at a time; meanwhile I held up everyone behind me.
I should have taken the elevator down the one flight. But I felt stupid doing it. So instead I inconvenienced the 50 people behind me.
While I don’t make a habit of it, I have been known to wear high heels when dressing up. In high heels, I have a very hard time walking down stairs. I’ve almost managed to trip down them, which put me at risk of serious injury. Therefore, when wearing high heels, I prefer to take the elevator. I can still walk up stairs in heels.
Admittedly, at the time I did this the most, the building I lived in had adequate elevators, especially on Sunday morning- the most common time for me to wear high heels. Also admittedly, this problem could be solved as easily by not wearing heels, as by taking the elevator, but vanity can be as much at fault as laziness.
