So every morning I step into an elevator bank for my office building. There are four elevators in that bank, and as people proceed through the security gate, there are two questions that arise:
1) Is it worth it to rush through the security gate, up to the elevator and make eye contact with one of its occupants to have them hold it open?
2) If I'm inside, is it worth it to hold open the door for other people coming towards the elevator?
After some thought, the answer is definitely, "no" and here is why...
In a bank of four elevators, holding the door does several things:
1) Keeps you from your destination by delaying your elevator departure.
2) Makes you wait for another person to get into the elevator.
3) Increases the chances of an additional stop on the elevator.
4) Delays you enough so that you may have to hold it for another person, thus bringing you back to issue 2 & 3.
If you are the person going to the elevator, it still isn't worth it. Just wait for the first one to go, and then get another elevator with less people and less stops!
The argument against this is that it's impolite to close the door, but when you step back and think - it is much more practical to keep the elevators moving and have people get where they are going fast. If you have one elevator in your building though, this may not apply. In that case, I don't have any advice.
So next time you are alone in an office elevator and see someone coming, waiving at you to hold the door, press the close button.
1 comment:
There are many fascinating topics to discuss in the realm of elevator etiquette and optimization, and this is one of them. (I've been meaning to blog about elevator topics for a while, but it's fallen by the wayside since I don't take an elevator on a daily basis anymore. Eh.) People will give you all sorts of pained and annoyed looks when you don't hold the door for them as they realize their desperate rush-and-lunge will be in vain... but you're really doing them a favor, assuming there's at least two elevators in the bank (since having one elevator for 40 floors would cause the unfortunate soul left behind to have to wait for quite a while... but when do you ever encounter that scenario?)
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