Lift Culture

People here hit two buttons when they get into a lift. First they hit the floor they want, then they hit the close door button. It's not unusual for this to be done, even if people are still boarding the lift, I actually had doors shut on me today.

This strikes me as funny, because the lifts here, typically wait less than half a second after a floor selection, to close the door and start their journey. You'd think that's quick enough, but trust me, if you're the last one to board the lift and you hit your floor without hitting the close door button, someone will reach past and do it for you, unless they are from out of town as well...

If you enjoy being glared at, I highly recommend a trip to Singapore, where you get into as man lifts as possible and never hit the close door button. Personally, I love it.

On the other hand, the lift in the hotel I frequent is Pennsylvania has (possibly) the slowest lift in the world, both in terms of how long you wait for the doors to close and in how slowly it moves between the 3 floors. A healthy stroll on the stairs will typically beat the lift, if you hit them as the door is closing, any earlier and you'd have to be pretty slow to get beaten to your given floor.

Here, of course, no one goes for the button, (except me, now I've been to Singapore and the wait for the doors feels like minutes), but even the button only does so much and most people are quite happy to wait those 30 or so seconds, simply using up the life they have left, I guess most of them weren't going to do anything significant with them anyway...

Right, I'm done feeling bitchy, time to move on.