Have you read the earlier posts? More than one poster has agreed that down is harder than up for someone with a bad knee. :rolleyes:
Think about the mechanics of walking down stairs. It’s much less controlled than going up. Unless you really pay attention, it’s more like a controlled fall. Plus, when your ankle breaks over, it requires your knee to bend at a greater angle than does going up.
Finally, for those of you with such a problem with folks using the elevator, why are you on it? After all, if going down’s so easy, should ten flights be any harder than one?
I’d like to address the OP and all people who feel that it’s always unfair for a person to take an elevator for one floor. I suffer from gout. Unless you’re willing to let me show you my inflamed phalanges, you’re not going to notice that I’m having an attack. However, every step I take is done at the cost of some pain. Depending how bad the attack might be, it’s anywhere from “ow,” to “Goddam, will someone just let me borrow a fucking chain-saw!” When I am suffering such an attack, I don’t give a damn for how inconvenient it is for you to have to stop at floor two, or three, or even five. I am going to everything I can to avoid taking more steps than I absolutely have to. And that means I’m going to use the elevator.
I won’t even feel guilty for it - it’s a legitimate use.
When my mother first started walking after her hip replacement surgery, she found it much easier to go UP than go down stairs. It took more phys therapy for her to master going down without pain.
To continue – this is ANOTHER post presenting personal experience (well - at one remove) that there are physical conditions that may make it easier to go up than down. How many such posts are necessary before the possibility penetrates your skull?
Wheelchair … no
cane … no
crutches … no
scooter … no
Oh well. I’m “naughty”.
At the library I work at (4 floors) I generally take the elevator, except for the one set of stairs there are shorter drops, and thus less painful on me. I have a mild case of cerebral palsy, and also a phobia of letting go of any railing. I can’t go down more than 2-3 stairs (total) without a railing. I’m also left-handed and go a lot slower trying to go down on the ‘correct’ side.
I feel bad for using the elevator, but oh well. Let the other people think what they will. They can see my limp, and if that’s not enough for them – not my fault. I am ABSURDLY slow on staircases and generally try and not have anyone behind me at any point.
I guess in the end I will continue to use the elevator because my suffering physically/emotionally is more important than a person’s annoyance, because I take my suffering home with me and not their annoyance. If they are so annoyed at a slow elevator, take the damned stairs. By some people’s logic, healthy people should not use elevators at ALL but they do. Why is the OP using an elevator at all again? Why is anyone who gets annoyed that people use the elevator to go down?
/S
PS: Going down stairs is much harder than going up FWIW.
I used to do this in one building at uni. I barely ever went into this building, and for the life of me could NOT find the stairs. I have found them now, just look for the only door without numbers on it ;).
After living in an apartment building and seeing who hung out in them, (and hearing about what they did) I’m wary of stairwells. I don’t take stairs if they aren’t in the middle of a building. I may go down a stairwell if I’m not alone, otherwise I’ll take the elevator.
Folks, I have no idea who takes elevators up or down, and I don’t much care, because I have no idea who’s on them, 'cus I just don’t take them.
Further, I had assumed (silly me) that folks needing to take an elevator either direction wouldn’t give a flying fig about my opinion, 'cus if they need to take the elevator, that’s their business, and they certainly won’t get any grief from me, because I’m never on the elevator.
Thirdly, able-bodied people who take the elevator down strike me as lazy. I’m sure the fact that I sit around watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, while munching on Tostitos strikes other people as lazy - that’s fine.
Finally, chill the fuck out, would ya people? I’m pretty sure that your grandmother, or your frail elderly aunty, or your poor hobbled brother don’t give a flying fuck about my opinion on elevators and their uses - you shouldn’t either.
And of course it is no part of the OP to criticize those with recently broken legs, or other physical ailments, including the psychological (which thank God we haven’t even touched on yet).
But all you angrified folks aren’t going to tell me that the 30 or 40 (different) twenty-something folks I’ve seen per week carrying nothing heavier than a water-bottle halting a packed elevator on its long trip down and then attempting to force their way aboard on the second floor are ALL among the physically disabled, are you?
Really, that’s a ridiculously arrogant opinion. Until you’ve had medical issues that hamper movement and make certain positions and movement quite painful, you have no idea, and no rights to judge others’ motives.
Honestly? No. At that point in the day, I’m in the tired/dazed mode and I’m not really noticing or making any mental pronouncements on the motives or rights of people to use elevators and for how many floors they’re “allowed” to use them without being labeled rude or lazy.
Also, we don’t really have a lot of buildings that are that tall or crowded so that the crowded superslow elevator situation is really all that widespread. I think our tallest buildings are only 15/20 stories maybe. And those being state or municipal buildings, where most traveling on the elevator is pretty much of the mind “I’m on the state payroll anyway, I don’t really care how long it takes me to get to X department on the third floor”. So, maybe I’ve just not run across it in the same situations you have.
I suppose that if you work in a 90 floor building or something and the last 5 floors, where the “lazy healthy young people” that are supposed to be taking the stairs or risk being thought rude and lazy, are actually taking the elevator, causing those last five floors to stretch out the trip to ten to fifteen extra minutes, then I guess you’d have a point and a legitimate gripe.
pt r r:Who the fuck decided that it was verboten to get into public debates about such rude, stupid, selfish behavior?
The blessedly wise benefactors of humanity who developed the ordinary rules of etiquette, realizing that (as many posters have pointed out) it is impossible to tell just by looking at people whether they “really need” to take the elevator or not.
So starting a “public debate” about whether your fellow elevator passengers are exhibiting “rude, stupid, selfish behavior” is likely to be more trouble than it’s worth in terms of embarrassment, resentment, and hurt feelings. Plus, it won’t get the elevator to its destination any faster.
Mind you, those same blessedly wise benefactors of humanity also recognized that it is discourteous to inconvenience other people just because you’re being lazy. The general rule that you should take the stairs rather than the elevator for short distances, if you’re physically up to it, is still in force.
But so is the general rule that you shouldn’t argue with fellow passengers about whether they’re being lazy or are genuinely “entitled” to use the elevator. And in the long run, the second rule probably saves even more inconvenience and unpleasantness than the first.
No, it doesn’t work that way. You may not offer a useless, brain-dead opinion, and then disclaim responsibility by pointing out that the people condemned by your useless opinion probably wouldn’t care. If you wish to avoid censure for your idiocy, the best course of action would be to shut the fuck up. In a message board context, that means not posting in the first place and giving voice (or word, I suppose) to every random and useless thought that passes through what passes for your brain.
When you ignore this wise counsel, and post anyway, you invite comment. When you suggest that, so far as you can see, people unencumbered by a wheelchair, using a cane or crutches or on a mobility scooter are lazy for using the elevator to go down, that’s merely ignorant. That’s fine, in light of the mission of this board. When you post such a view IN SPITE OF MANY POSTS THAT CONTRADICT YOUR THESIS, that’s aggressively ignorant.
Having been confronted with your aggressive ignorance, and then failing to apologize and withdraw it, and instead defending it in some bizarre, passive-aggressive mish-mash view that those people most maligned by your opinion probably wouldn’t care is absolutely fucking moronic.
Silly me, I was unaware that elevators had rules for their use like “you may only use this if you are traveling more than three floors” “you may only use this if you have a Dr’s note saying you need to”.
I was also laboring under the delusion that it was the height of rude behavior to judge negatively the actions of others who aren’t doing anything wrong. the 30 seconds out of your life at the end of your elevator ride certainly is no different from the 30 seconds during the middle where some one else got on, is it? apparently it is.
Without resorting to the witless technique of mere sarcasm, let me get a trifle serious here and report that, in addition to expressing personal annoyance, I’m seeking to research an article on elevators on urban campuses, and the most serious problem I’ve encountered is the strange situation described in the OP, where an antiquaited building cannot have more elevator banks added to it, and where the building’s population has approximately doubled while the building’s size has remained constant, making virtually every elevator trip a protracted, time-consuming and very crowded one.
Rather than resort to such draconian measures as issuing elevator-passes to the infirm and the elderly (and perhaps to those going above, say, the sixth floor), how would you cope with the problem of ruinously packed cars and very long waits? I’m sincerely interested in helpful responses to this question, now that I’ve discovered active opposition to voluntary walking down a flight or two of stairs.
[QUOTE=alice_in_wonderland]
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. [/down]
Or unless you ran a marathon the previous day or two.
Hmmm…well, having just turned 30, I’m probably one of those 20-something folks with the water bottle you’ll see on the elevator. See, I have arthritis in my right hip, and going up or down stairs is liable to put me in enough pain that I walk with a limp for the rest of the day. I’d rather be able to take the elevator and avoid the limping and pain for the day.