Going Up?

I have changed the title of this blog; that is the web address. I do so as a public service. Trattoria Italiana is a restaurant in the District of Columbia that has probably been closed by a health violation by now. If not, I issue a warning to you all: don't eat here. You'll have better luck getting Italian food at Oktoberfest. Or, for that matter, at a Chef Boyardee factory.

That having been said, I want to talk about elevators.

I have spent a considerable amount of time on or waiting for elevators, as have most urban dwellers in the US (and I would imagine Western Europe). This has been in a number of contexts - both in residences (be they dormitories, apartments or condominia) and in commercial or academic buildings. Over time I started to notice the oddest little behaviors associated with elevators and elevator travel. People have a system. It's thoroughly bizarre.

There is a geography to elevators. Watch it the next time you enter an elevator with more than one person. The principal position is standing either to the left or right, just behind the doors. Whether the position is on one side or the other depends upon where the buttons are; the first person on an elevator will invariably take up a dominating position over the buttons.

The second person on an elevator will usually - though not universally - move to the rear. Regardless they will stand on the opposite side of the Button Person. How they deal with the Button Person is largely a matter of personal preference and the druthers of the Button Person themselves. A courteous Button Person will ask another entrant which floor they would prefer; the more surly ones do not. The Second Person then has the unenviable choice of asking for a floor or invading the space of the Button Person and pressing their floor themselves, drawing an angry glare from the Button Person.

As more people board, the elevator fills at the back and sides (the side away from the Button Person first) and then from there to the doors. As soon as a Button Person deboards - even if there's only one other person on the elevator - another will immediately take their place and in that role repress their own floor (and perhaps every other selected floor) and/or mash the "Door Close" button repeatedly until the recalcitrant elevator obeys. There is no situation in which the buttons are left unattended, and there is no situation in which an elevator with more than one occupant has each floor called only one. It simply does not happen. You could probably quantify it: for every n people aboard an elevator heading for a given floor, each button will be pressed n-1 times more than necessary. You could add x as an obnoxiousness multiplier: n people will press the button n-1 more times than are necessary multiplied by x, which is the sum total of every irritation, lost minute or missed deadline suffered by the group of people that day.

Obviously that's a very simple equation. You can design your own.

Not everyone can use an elevator, either. Not at all. There seems to be a sliding scale in the social acceptability of elevator usage. In any building where there is a gap of more than two floors between the ground and the top, people going to the closest floors to the ground are expected not to board if there are others waiting. I get dirty looks taking the elevator from the first floor to the second in my building - where the highest floor is third (incidentally, the people giving me the looks always walk up to the buttons and mash '3' as soon as I step off the elevator). When I lived in an eight storey building (a ground floor, a basement and six floors above), I was resident on the third floor. I could not count on both hands the number of times I was given shit for taking the elevator to the third floor.

And I would follow certain rules, not always consciously: I would rarely take the elevator down. I would not take it at all at rush hour. I would not take the elevator if someone I didn't know was waiting or if I did not think I could board it and leave before a person I didn't know could reach it. There was clear glass between the elevator banks and the doors at the front desk, around which people would have to curve to get to the elevator - I became expert at timing the elevator so I could get away before someone from, say, the seventh floor could reach me and begin to bitch. And despite my irritation that I was denied full elevator rights, though I paid the same as everybody else, I always slagged off anyone from the second floor (or worse, the basement) who tried to take the elevator.

Usually an irritated glare would do. Sometimes others weren't so shy. I have been verbally attacked for taking the elevator up a mere two floors, and I'm not the only one. It's really an epidemic of social violence, but it is regrettably outside the scope of this examination. Needless to say somebody should do something about that.

Elevator decorum where boarding and deboarding are concerned seem to follow the same procedures as do buses or subway trains. People get off first and then get on; but the convention is weak and distinctly American. I discovered this, for instance, which details the same behavior in China. One comment describes boarding a subway as "something like the offensive and defensive line, right after the ball is snapped in real-style football." His description almost reminds me of Thomas Hobbes. It was almost gloating, too: comment after comment smirked about how small and slightly-built the Chinese were, and how easy it was for an average Westerner to excel at their door game.

Meanwhile, an article by a Westerner living in Azerbaijan enlightened me to unique breaches of American elevator custom there. Apparently there it is both common and acceptable to hit the down button when you want to go up, if the descending elevator is closer. I don't know if it has ever occurred to an American to game the system this way; it certainly didn't occur to me. (The same search, incidentally, found me this website; it seems... completely egregious, and unlike my project is not explanatory but normative. I am not here to tell you how to take your elevators.)

There was a brief comment about gendered elevator etiquette at a website entitled, ironically, "Nasty, Brutish and Short." That and the Azerbaijan article both talk about the appropriateness of letting women off the elevator first, unless a crowd prevents it. I have never heard of this in life, and frankly I think it quite sexist (this from a man who has been holding doors for all and sundry since he turned ten). I have never observed it in my life, either, or observed any obvious or subtle social cues that women should be let out first. I checked out the blog's about page; the author is from Cincinatti, Ohio, so perhaps there is a midwestern gentility I'm missing out on (I don't know many midwesterners - if you are one, have you heard of this?). Alternatively they might just be inspired by their famous forbear.

I thought about it today: a little metal box, soaring high in the air, no way out except those entrances and exits which are carefully prescribed long in advance by forces far beyond your control. Different customs and behaviors depending upon where you came from and how you were raised and where you are and yet you can't just get away from the ones that are unfamiliar - you're stuck. Certain people (often the ones who got their first) are always in control, and they behave as though it is natural that this is so - and there is a fairly rigid system of behavior that requires the utmost reaction should it be violated. Some fellow travellers are polite and benevolent, some are angry and bitter, and some are just completely lost. And the entire trip - the entire affair - is just an unenviable, undesirable way station, a brief utility in the service a bigger and broader goal.

Elevators. Who knew?