I don’t believe the “intended purpose” of an elevator was to move people one floor. I don’t believe they would have been invented, except for freight, if we hadn’t started building taller buildings in which to live and work.
I don’t think we’re clamoring to put them in our bungaloos and split-levels.
As a matter of fact, I suspect the whole point of the “express elevator” which skips the lower floors of a building is to avoid this problem completely.
canvasshoes, I think your brain is “slow-moving, sluggish”. The point is, there’s a trade-off going on. Of course, it takes the same amount of time for an elevator to stop at the 7th floor as it does the first floor. Those on the elevator are simply more forgiving of the stop on the 7th because those people on the elevator deem that, “yes, it is worth all of us stopping to save Sally Seventh-Floor walking 7 flights of stairs”.
It is not contradictory, in the least, for those same people to think, “I can’t believe we’re stopping again because Fatty First-Floor doesn’t want to take the stairs.”
But, I can see how you missed that the first 50 times it was pointed out.
I think this is a bigger part of this than people are considering.
In many buildings, the elevators are right out front, while the stairs are rather concealed. And they are often small, enclosed, and rather dark spaces – not a very safe place to be sometimes, especially if they are usually pretty deserted.
I worked in a building (SuperValu corporate headquarters) which had a big, wide set of stairs right off the front lobby, that was well lighted and wide open. The building was only about 4 stories, and the elevators were also nearby, behind you, but nearly everyone used the stairs to go between floors. I think this was due to the design of the building: you were just naturally led to use the stairs. A very successful design.
Perhaps we should put more pressure on architects, to make the stairs a more prominent feature of their design, rather than hiding them in dark back corners. In many classical buildings, the ‘grand staircase’ is a major point of the design.
But HOW do they know that someone just doesn’t want to take the stairs and not that that person has some injury or some reason for NEEDING to take the stairs? They don’t know. They cannot possibly know. And they should mind their own goddamn business instead of concerning themselves with why someone uses the elevator.
I learned a long time ago that everyone has some kind of disability(ies) (obviously, different degrees of each disability), so I tend to ignore issues such as these (second floor elevator users)…you may end up eating crow most likely.
Why not get off the second floor and take the stairs yourself?
CanvasShoes, I said that I hoped it would make people think twice. As I’ve said, I’ve come to the elevator and when people see me pull up, they bolt for the stairs. It does cause problems for me, because I don’t have any choice. For example, in one building on campus the entrance is six steps lower than the main level, maybe 18 steps (+/-) to the basement, maybe a total of 30 steps to the second floor. These are estimates since I don’t take the stairs. I don’t like having to wait what can add up to 15 minutes in the course of a day waiting for elevators. I give people the benefit of the doubt when they ride the elevators. I only expressed my desire that people that don’t need the elevator think twice when they see that there are people (like myself) that don’t have a choice.