The Elevator Effect

In the first-world, elevators are everywhere. And have been for the past half-century at least. Even 3-year old kids are at ease with them; they don't feel scared of getting into a tiny vault-like box that transports them vertically, sometimes towards gravity, and sometimes against. Even they know what to do when they get inside an elevator. Regardless of such intimate familiarity with this inanimate piece of machinery, something strange happens to most people when they are in the proximity of elevators. It almost feels like an elevator has a mysterious personality of its own, and has the ability to affect seemingly normal human beings in various idiosyncratic ways.

The most obvious effect is a dramatic change in a person's velocity when they are around an elevator. Some people get into a zombie mode. They might have walked at average human walking speeds to an elevator, pressed a button to summon the thing and waited for it. They would have checked the time every second and complained about how slow and inefficient the elevators in this building ar. However, when the elevator finally appears, they will slow down to such an extent that you, standing inside the elevator waiting for them to step in, would be likely to think that they have gone into a trance. They will take short, measured steps at a snail-like speed towards the elevator, step in ever so gingerly as if they were expecting the floor to be at boiling-point temperatures, and then take about 90 seconds to decide where they want to go, and another 270 to press the button to their destination. And, more often than not, you will encounter such people when you are inside the elevator and in a hurry to get to your own destination.

Other people become spasmodic and jittery. First they slow down to the above-mentioned zombie mode, and then suddenly snap out of it almost when the elevator doors are about to close. Then they will thrust a body-part through the closing doors, usually an arm or a leg, half-expecting the doors to open up again, half-expecting the door to close shut and entrap the body-part they put at risk. The doors obviously have been built by engineers who expect such reactions from people, and they invariably open up to let the person with the endangered body part in, but it costs you, the one inside and in a hurry, a precious 3 extra minutes, and causes most elevators to blurt out some ridiculous warning in the most annoying, high-pitched feminine voice that can permanently hurt your ear-drums.

Other effects on people are less pronounced but equally frequent and annoying. If more than five people get into an elevator at the same time, one or more of the following things are bound to happen - 

1. Someone will be doused with the strongest-smelling perfume you can imagine, and your nostrils will curl up in protest;

2. Someone will have strong BO (and if you are particularly unlucky, the above two things will sometimes happen together and leave you nauseated and giddy);

3. Someone will hold the door open for people who are still about half-a-mile away and have no inclination of getting in;

4. Someone will have a large object to carry with them, most commonly bicycles, and they will cramp you up for room;

5. Someone will stand so close to you that you can see the pores in their skin;

6. Someone will press the wrong button and make you stop at one extra floor;

7. Someone hale and hearty might be going only one floor up or down but would take the elevator instead of the stairs; and

8. The elevator will stop at least one floor where someone had summoned the elevator and then realized that they were not ready to step in yet.

And then, of course, there is elevator talk. Some people tend to become increasingly chatty when they get into an elevator, and the more the people in the elevator, the more is their desire to talk over their heads in loud voices, and mostly about some inane and insignificant topic. And if you are transporting yourself more than three floors in either direction, you will bump into at least one person who would be narrating a harrowing experience about how they once got stuck in an elevator. 

If only we had no elevators, people would be more physically fit, and you wouldn't have had to read this blog!