This thread is based on a nightmare I had last night.
Let’s say that you are in a hurry to get to an extremely important meeting on the 35th floor. The regular passenger elevator is out of order, or maybe there’s a long line – waiting for that elevator will make you 10-15 minutes late for your extremely important meeting. However, you have the option of using a small elevator that’s normally used for freight. The elevator is 2 feet by 2 feet. This means that your back is against the back wall of the elevator, and your face is inches from the front wall. You can move your arms enough to push a button, but it would be difficult to raise your arms over your head. The elevator is 7 feet tall and has an air vent in the ceiling. Would you get in this elevator and ride it to the 35th floor?
How about if the elevator is 3 feet by 3 feet? 4 feet by 4 feet? Would you ride the 4x4 elevator if there were a second person in it?
Just thinking about the 2x2 elevator makes me anxious and nauseous. I don’t think I could get in it to save my life. The 3x3 I would get in only to save my life. I would get in the 4x4, but I wouldn’t be happy about it, and I wouldn’t ride it if I had to share.
I’ve ridden many times in an elevator that was at my former employer’s Peruvian headquarters. It was about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of most American elevators (maybe 4 or 5’ square and was always packed with people. Maybe 10-12 people every ride (Peruvians are typically smallish folks, so at least my head was above the crowd). But what freaked me out the most was as I got to understand just enough Spanish to read the warning sign in the elevator: “In case of Earthquake do NOT use the elevator”. Which always made me worry about what should happen to our sardine can if an earthquake were to come to pass. Oh, it was always a ride to the 11th or 12th floor. And lots of guys with guns to get past before you even had to worry about the elevator.
The first time I visited Paris, the elevator in my hotel was triangular, and held exactly one person and one suitcase (the suitcase had to be held vertically). In a misguided effort to alleviate claustrophobia, they mirrored all three surfaces. I felt like I was in le zone twilight.
I was on the 6th floor and, except for the initial ride up, I always took the stairs.
Yeah, some of those Parisian elevators are pretty freakin small. I imagine that many of them have to be custom built in whatever odd shape to fit into the really old buildings. When I stayed there earlier this year, our hotel’s elevator could not gfit me and our two-year old’s tiny travel stroller at the same time. It had to leave the stroller in the lobby, hug her tight in the elevator, and then come back to get the stroller later.
To the OP: As long as fit and could breath, I really don’t care. It would bother me if I was going to be stuffed into a tiny elevator with other people, but by myself, it would be fine.
As long as it had a current inspection sticker on it saying it was safe, I think I’d actually kind of like it. Since it’s a one-person ride, it would have no reason ever to stop anywhere but my floor. It’d be quick that way. I wonder if any buildings could be convinced to replace their large 'vators with 4 mini-lifts each?
Well, when I went to Boston University I had to ride in a lot of elevators that could only hold 2, 3 people. 4 if you were literally packed like sardines. (They were so small because they were in brownstones that had to be retrofitted with elevators.) So, yeah, I’d get in it.
Small spaces don’t really bother me at all as long as I have enough room to breathe. So yeah, I’d be able to be in a 2x2 elevator no problem. I really prefer small spaces as opposed to huge spaces. I can see everything in a small area, but not in a large area.
Yeah, my first thought was ‘Of course I would…I’ve travelled through Europe.’
Though I’ll admit the elevators in our hotel in Cairo were the smallest. I actually think they employed some sort of singularity to warp space and fit a human in there.
Of course, that was the same place with the shower head positioned vertically above the toilet in the 3x3 washroom.
Considering I would rather take the stairs to the 8th floor and still end up 2 minutes late than wait behind the other 20 people queued up for the elevator that takes ages to return to the ground floor, yes I’d take the damn tiny elevator and not be late.
A grain elevator I used to work at had a man lift that I would not ride in. The thing was about 2’X2’.The alternative was a 60 foot ladder. I gladly climbed the ladder.
Maybe a 4’ X4’.
Think of a dumbwaiter that never stops, you just step into it and step off. Worked at a place in Germany that had one and it kind of freaked me out…what if I tripped? Would I be cut in half?
They are pretty much history now…doubt there are any more than a dozen left in all of Germany, if that.
But as to the OP…I once slid down a laundry shoot as a kid…if that counts. It was fun until my grandmother about whooped my ass for doing it.
I have ridden in the tiny Boston elevators (not at BU, just for businesses on Newbury) and they don’t bother me one bit. They’re kind of cute. Mind you, I’m mostly only going three or four stories in them.
Reminds me of an elevator in Nairobi. Probably about 6’ x 4’, but packed with people. No working lights, so when the doors closed, all was pitch black, including the button that you had to push to make the doors open (took a while to figure that one out!). The funny thing was that the elevator only went up to the fifth floor (the original height of the building). We had to get to the ninth floor. Who here thinks it’s a good idea to add four floors to a building as an afterthought?
There’s one of these in the Arts Tower at Sheffield University. It took me half a term to get the courage to use it. With practise the trick is to go into the building and straight into the paternoster without breaking stride. I never had the nerve to ride it all the way over the top or down below and, indeed that has been known to cause a nasty accident.
Elevators turn up in my dreams all the time, man…in all shapes and sizes. The one thing they have in common is they don’t go where I tell them to. Sometimes they just joyride up and down, up and down, never letting me off, frequently at such high rates of speed I can hear wind howling through the cracks in the doors.
Frequently these elevators are in fancy shmancy hotels, or towers containing really big bells.
