This is the view from my hotel room. I know I said I'd be away for a couple of weeks but I've got a few minutes and I have two elevator stories. Like the New York subway system this hotel has express and local elevators. The local only goes up to the 20th floor, while the express skips all the floors between 2 and 20. The floor I'm on is high enough to take the express.
With that in mind I walked around the corner this afternoon to see a woman waiting patiently for an express elevator. After a few seconds of observing her I did the obvious and pushed the call button. Soon an elevator appeared! I got in and she got in (I wasn't being ungentlemanly, I was in front of the door that opened) and she remarked that the elevators were really slow for express elevators. She had taken the local elevator but it only got her to the 20th floor and her room was on the 22nd. I didn't sense any awareness that she needed to push the button for the 22nd floor in order to get to that floor. She sure was glad her paper session wasn't until Friday because it might take her that long to figure out the elevators. As the elevator cruised past the 18th floor I hit 22. Who knows how long she might have stayed in there if I hadn't.
Story number two. Coming back from dinner I got in the elevator with a bunch of other people. One person said loudly "I can't tell if anyone pushed 23." I was next to the set of buttons on the right side of the door so I pushed 23. He thanked me by rhetorically asking "What's that old saying about some people making better doors than windows?" Seriously!
Come on, geographers, elevator skills aren't that difficult to master!
Hopefully not a representative sample of us geographers!
Posted by: Greg | 13 April 2011 at 10:24 PM
map it out for them.
Posted by: judy | 14 April 2011 at 05:55 PM
one basic fact that seems to elude folks these days:
you have to wait and let the people off, before getting on the elevator yourself!
Posted by: Jeff | 17 April 2011 at 12:53 PM