I work on the eleventh floor and I often (maybe three or four times a week) DO take the stairs. It’s good exercise. I hate the jerkfaces who ride the elevator to the second floor, though.
To add to the trivia over passes and getting into an office from the stairwell, the tenth floor of my building is the only one that doesn’t have a pad for key card swiping in the stairwell. What’s on the tenth floor? The regional FBI office.
The only time I did this was when I was working at the Heinz Center here, and the only stairs for the first two floors were these wire-scaffolding type stairs, where you could see through them to the floors below. I have a terrible fear of heights, and I couldn’t go up them without freezing and getting scared. So I used the elevator.
Usually, it wasn’t full, and I was there before the place opened, so it’s not like I was holding anyone up.
Well, I’m guilty in my apartment building, but, by contrast, I set a fine example in the parking garage at work.
My apartment building has four levels including a separate grarage/lobby level; but I take the elevator up to my first-floor apartment because the stairs are out of the way (and my hands are usually full).
But at work I can’t abide the slow elevators in the parking structure, so I walk down five or seven stories with all my stuff for work in my hands.
We’ve recently moved to the first floor, but when my office was on the second floor, I was guilty of taking the elevator sometimes.
Why? I have arthritis in my right leg and hip, and sometimes stairs will exacerbate the hell out of it - for some reason, the climbing motion is a bad one for me, as is walking down the stairs because it puts extra pressure on my hip. There’ve been times I’ve already been hurting, decided to take the stairs anyway for the hell of it, and have been in incredible pain for the rest of the day.
I don’t LIKE to take the elevator when the stairs are faster, but if it’s a choice between taking the elevator a floor or walking the stairs and hurting for the rest of the day, I’d rather take the elevator.
Unfortunately, I also live on the third floor of an apartment building. That can make me hurt for the rest of the day without any way to avoid it.
I love falling apart at the age of 30.
E.
You obviously haven’t seen the Julian Inn. 
Whoops! Forgot the relevant part!
As a matter of fact, I stayed there on my wedding night.
I would stay at the Julien every night of the week before I even went near the Grand Harbor again. The Julien is much cheaper, has character, TWO elevators, a decent bar and doesn’t have an ass-load of screaming kids.
Don’t forget the prostitutes! Karaoke, too.
Nope, it’s security. (BTW, I’m a structural engineer) Next time you’re in a stairwell, notice how all the doors on the upper floors open into the stairwell and the ground floor exit door opens out from the stairwell. That’s the fire safety part, not the locking. I mostly see the locked stairwells in taller buildings with ground floor security. My building doesn’t have that type of security and, therefore, no locked stairwells.
But, you’re right, the stairwells pretty much have nothing flammable in them plus there are at least two of them so there’s an alternate route if one is blocked. (you know the old rule about feeling to see if the door is hot before you open it, right?) Plus, in many building, the stairwell is a large part of the building frame so it’s one of the most sturdy places in the building. (which is why most tornado drills instruct you to take refuge in the stairwells, no windows and extra reingforcing)
Yeah, that was the old idea. Too bad it doesn’t work that way all the time.
People in Chicago died in the county building fire, trapped in stairwells. They were above the fire and went to exit, but could not go down past the fire, and they were trapped in what became a hot and smoky area and died. The firefighters were told they were there.
I do believe the regulations here changed that week. The news on the radio played clips of Mayor Daley saying that the companies would damn well unlock the stairwells now, and if they are worried about security, pay $8 hour for the guards they needed until they could make other security measures.
In the recent LaSalle building fire, there were reports of some entering the stairwell and then going back into the main building when they could not make it safely out of the building. No one died in that fire. The firefighters also used the new methods for search and clearing the building before concentrating on the fire.
It seems to me that secured stairwells would actually be a fire hazard. If there’s a fire, how in hell does the fire department get in to fight it?
We had a situation here where the lobby level stairwell door was locked from the outside (i.e. we could get out but not in), which was really annoying for those of us who prefer the stairs (I work on the 4th floor, so it’s not much of a climb). We used the “firefighter access” arguement to get building management to unlock it.
This article explains what happened inthe county building fire.
What is to stop someone from scamming their way into the building then navigate to other floors via the elevator? I’m missing something because I’ve never been into a building like this.
Wouldn’t this be a fire hazard? What would someone do in fire? Go down to the second floor then jump out a window?
In most buildings of this type, typically you will have different companies occupying different floors of the building. When you get off the elevator you have to go past a receptionist to get into the actual working areas.
In some cases, where a company might occupy 2 or 3 floors, the elevator is programmed so that it will only stop on the floors with a receptionist, unless you have an employee access card to allow you onto specific floors.
I don’t know who the hotel bribed to get this plan past the building inspectors. I’ve often thought there must be some way out that I’ve overlooked, but I’ve looked for stairs to the ground floor several times and not found them.
As FatBaldGuy said, in many cases, when you get off of the elevator, you’ll be dumped into a reception area that’s manned by someone. In my building, however, since we don’t have a central reception area, the building is constructed in such a way that the elevators dump you into a small lobby on every floor. To get from the elevator lobby into the actual office area, you either need to have a card key or there’s a phone provided in each lobby that you can use to call someone to let you in if you’re visiting or meeting someone.