Elevators

---

This is an essay about elevators. I feel like we all get kind of uneasy in them. Here I explore why. What do you think? All critque is not only weclomes but solicited.

You enter the hotel lobby. Set into the back wall, the grey doors of an elevator sit solemnly. Four people stand facing the doors as if looking at an altar. You walk up to them. Upon hearing your advancing footsteps, a dark haired woman of about forty turns towards you just enough to look you up and down without making eye contact. You look back at her. Having been caught in your gaze, she makes that familiar, noncommittal, waiting-for-an-elevator gesture; she throws her eyebrows to the sky and quickly returns them to their original position, seemingly saying, "I see you, but I don't have anything to say to you." You continue past her and hit the already lit up "up" button.
You turn around and face the four silent people waiting for the elevator. One of them is fiddling with his cell phone. Another is staring at his polished dress shoes. The middle aged woman is now fixing her hair. No one is talking to each other. Everyone looks slightly uncomfortable.
At last the elevator arrives, the grey doors open, and the two passengers inside exit. The five of you get your gear together and hurry towards the gaping doors. Each person enters, taps a floor button, then retreats to the section of real estate furthest removed from anyone else. The interior is clean, maybe too clean. A metal handrail snakes around the three walls. Fluorescents brightly illuminate the pseudo-room from behind opaque rectangular glass.
The five of you are once again staring at the doors, this time at their other side. The man is checking his text messages, the woman is once again fiddling with her hair. All is silent save for the faint ding, ding, ding, ding, that accompanies your arrival at each floor. The stuffy silence, the cramped space, and the eerie dings make the elevator feel like a scene from The Hunt for Red October. The elevator hurtles through the air. At each stop, your elevator-mates attempt the nearly impossible feat of getting on and off without looking at each other. You get off on the thirteenth floor and don’t look back.
There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary about the preceding scenario. Yet the thought of being inside of an elevator makes most people uncomfortable. What is it about an elevator that creates such feelings of unease? Is it the fear of being trapped? Of being suspended in air, stuck inside a metal box? Or is it something else?
Statistically speaking, elevators are now the safest vehicle in the world. According to Good Housekeeping, out of 120 billion elevator rides in 1998, 10,000 people wound up in the emergency room because of elevator-related accidents. ‘Statistically, it's a safe ride’, says Ray Lapierre, executive director of the Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation.” (Good Housekeeping) Yet being safe “statistically speaking” provides us little comfort. Each time we go to press our floor button, we are confronted with an ominous “in case of emergency” warning. And we have all heard the horror stories.
For many people, the fear of being trapped, is very real. This fear is compounded by the thought of being trapped with others. On April 5th 2005, Ming Kuang Chen, a Chinese deliveryman, emerged alive and well from the elevator of the notorious Tracey Towers in the Bronx. After failing to return from his delivery three days prior, a search was initiated. Amazingly, a full two days of door-to-door searching elapsed before someone realized that he could be stuck in the out-of-order elevator. (CNN.com) "I tried to knock down the door and kept screaming for help, but no response," Chen said in the television interview. "During the time I was stuck in the elevator, I just kept sleeping because I don't know what else to do."
Cars are far more dangerous than elevators, but we don’t have a tightening of the chest every time we drive to the supermarket. Nor are we as anxious when we ski, swim, or do any number of far more dangerous activities. It then follows that most of the unease that accompanies a ride in the elevator must be caused by something else.
Elevators are scary not because of their malfunctioning, but rather, because we are uncomfortable being in close proximity to people. For isn’t it the glance of a fellow passenger that unnerves you, not the grumble of the machinery slowing to a stop? We live in a culture that constantly bombards us with this one simple fact: “You should trust no one.” The same hideous crimes are repeated day after day on the evening news, often beginning with a distraught victim saying something like, “He looked like such a nice guy. You know, (she sobs) he had such a nice smile, he made me feel so good.” By the fifth grade, in-school assemblies have children sufficiently frightened of strangers in cars, ostensibly with lollipops, that a mere slowing down is enough to send them running.
I’m as guilty as any; in second grade my friend Kyle and I would run to the bushes every time we heard a car come up our street. We had heard in school that there was a pedophile driving a red sports car in a neighboring town. In such ways, our culture coerces us into looking at strangers as threats, rather than people with whom we have much in common, namely, our humanity. We hold ourselves aloof and expect others to afford us the same "respect." In order to protect this mutual distrust, elevators are governed by an unspoken code of elevator conduct.
This begs the question, "what is correct elevator etiquette?" Luckily, our friends over at elevatorrules.com have catalogued all of the "dos and don'ts" of elevator use. In their "Once the Doors Close" section they say, "When talking on an elevator be considerate, talk softly and do not assume that everyone in the car cares about what you are saying. If your personality dictates that you must start a conversation with complete strangers, start with light discussion about weather or current events." And about space it says, "Always respect the personal space of the other passengers. Imagine an invisible buffer zone that extends about a foot from the person in all directions and keep out of that area. Always allow as much space as possible between you and the passengers. Always stand facing the door."
Joaquin, responding to this edict on a related forum, responds, "When there are a lot of passengers, I like to face into the crowd and not toward the doors. I find that this makes most people really uncomfortable." When you step back, however, you'll see that we are made uncomfortable by the oddest things. Why do we need to keep a "buffer zone" to feel comfortable? Why do we find it so hard to return anyone's gaze? Shouldn't we feel reassured by other's company rather than disconcerted?
American culture has become nearly neurotic in our attempt to protect ourselves, often to the extent of avoiding anything, or anyone, unfamiliar. The elevator is a microcosm of this larger fear of the unknown. Whereas we always have the chance to run away in the outside world- from the beggar, from the fiancé, from the new job- we are stuck for those brief moments in an elevator, at the mercy of life.
There are many people like Joaquin who thrive on this discomfort. A number of them videotaped themselves pulling pranks and then posted them on youtube.com. In the highest ranked clip entitled "Fart Joke Prank (Smellevator)”, three attractive women stand in the corner. One of them holds a whoopie cushion and fart spray in her hands, out of view behind her back. A number of different people enter, each time taking up a position against the far wall. Once each person is settled, the girl with her hands out of view squeezes the whoopie cushion and releases the foul smelling spray. Through a hidden camera we can see that the recipients of the prank are each time repulsed. The first victim is a male dressed casually in relaxed jeans and a navy blue zip-up sweat shirt. He screws up his face, turns towards the wall, then slips furtively to the door. The rest have similar, non-interactive responses. Those who were disgusted, were disgusted by themselves, facing away. Those who found it funny, found it funny by themselves, also facing away.
The closed space of an elevator also makes possible other interactions that would not happen elsewhere. "The Elevator Pitch", a youtube.com video by self-proclaimed "Mentor Capitalist" Sean Wise, encourages the audience to use the time in an elevator to grab investor's interest. Throughout the two minute clip Sean stands in an all-metal elevator, alternates between grabbing his sports jacket and waving around his index finger, and smiles disingenuously. "What is an 'elevator pitch?'" he asks, nearly yelling. "It's the term used for the two minute presentation. The exact amount of time it takes to go from the lobby (he motions to the buttons), to the investor's office on the top floor, to capture investor interest. Get it right and they'll invite you into the boardroom. Get it wrong and they'll call security."
After watching others explore the dynamics of the elevator via the internet, I decided it was my turn. Last Tuesday I walked up to the "towers" dormitory elevator at Ithaca College and, for an hour, took one of the elevators up and down.
The first person to walk in was a blond girl, shy, seemingly a freshman. She was dressed in blue sweatpants and a white t-shirt, which was barely visible poking out from beneath her grey sweatshirt. She entered, pressed her floor button, and stepped to the corner. Slowly I shuffled over to her, still looking at the door. She saw me in her peripheral vision, picked her eyes up to see what was going on, and lowered them again. I continued until our shoulders were almost touching. The tension mounted. She shuffled away from me. I followed her. She didn't say anything. The doors opened at her floor and she jumped out.
The next person to enter was a big guy with light brown hair dressed in loose jeans and a windbreaker. Once he had taken up his spot against the wall, I stepped into the middle of the elevator and began "stretching" my back by throwing my extended elbows back, twisting my torso. Each time I swung my right elbow, I came within inches of hitting this unfortunate guy. As I swung my right elbow fully into his “buffer zone,” he grimaced as if expecting the next swing to be the one to connect. I could tell he was worried, unhappy at being bothered, and within a couple of floors, pissed. Yet he, too, didn’t say anything to me, instead opting to reposition himself closer to the doors, as he attempted to ignore the flailing elbows now barely missing his lower back. We arrived at his floor and he exited.
Still unsatisfied, I decided to take my inside-the-elevator workout to another level. As soon as the next passenger, a smallish male with spiked hair and a polo shirt, entered, I extended my arms and leaned down over the door. I was completely blocking the exit. As I leaned into my “shoulder stretch”, I made a loud groaning noise. We approached his floor, the elevator dinged, and the doors swung open, but still I remained in my deep stretch. Instead of asking me to move, or, as you would expect, demanding it, he stooped over, bent his knees, and slipped through the small space between my outstretched leg and arm, uttering a barely audible, “Excuse me” once he was already under my wing. He looked like a World War I soldier running, crouched down, along a trench. Although proving my hypothesis correct, I was nonetheless surprised to see just how downright annoying I could be without anyone breaking the invisible divider and confronting me. It is as if the “buffer zones” were actually composed of soundproof, bulletproof glass, for it sometimes seems that we don’t even know that we have the choice, don’t even realize that we can let down our guard.
Before I got off, I decided that I must confront the invisible block directly. A girl with bleached blond hair dressed in sweatpants with writing across the butt entered. I smiled at her, outstretched my arm, and said, “I’m Nathan. What’s your name?” She too broke into a smile. “I’m Jenny. How are you doing?”
Next to enter was a frowning guy, “I’m Nathan. What’s your name?” He responded smiling, “John. It’s cold out there.”
Then I met Maggy, then the housekeeper Rosy, then her friend Bonny whom she introduced to me. Next came Michael, a bubbly office worker with a thick mustache. I went with him to his office on the 14th floor to continue our conversation about the thirty year history of that elevator. It became intoxicating. People got on, they made me happy, I made them happy, they got off. Not once did anyone remain distant. Every time they dropped their guard. Maybe there is a lesson to all this. Could it be that what we want most, but are most scared to pursue, is connection to others? Is it possible that the barriers we’ve contructed through years of elementary school assemblies and an odd incident, are just dying to be let down? Can you imagine your daily elevator ride being what you look forward to every day upon waking?

---

Comments

[zazzazz]

Get It Up
Nathan, Nicely done! As an extrovert I've always been intrigued by those that have hang-ups about strangers. Your essay covers this topic well, with some good insight into people's personal spaces and how they conceive their "buffer zones". As an Elevator Constructor, I'm constantly amazed at the inherent fear attached to elevators. The Hollywood vision of an elevator plummeting 40 floors at 100 mph is bad cliche and, due to modern (being in the last 125 years or so) safety mechanisms and regulatory-body mandated safety inspections, not likely at all. Like your research shows, vertical transportation is a very safe way to travel. The multiple and redundant safety features and circuits make today's elevator a safe and reliable ride. If there is a mechanical malfunction or a value out of parameter in an electronic circuit the elevator will fault-out and shut down. This is a good thing. In the worst-case scenario I'm in an entrapment (the elevator is faulted out for some reason or other and has stopped at whatever point it is at in the hoistway) like Mr. Chen. The logical thing to do is not to panic, but to assess the particular car that I find myself temporarily inconvenienced in for which corner I might need to avail myself of if the duration of my stay requires it and then have a seat. Maybe take a nap like Mr. Chen. DO NOT attempt to escape the car ala Bruce Willis with two guns blazing as you leap through the "escape" door. This is in actuality an access hatch for service and depending on local regulations may be locked. This is where people get seriously hurt or seriously dead as the elevator may run on automatic at any time and will not even care that a flimsy human hero is scaling the hoistway wall adjacent to the car on its way for help. Take a break and wait. If you're lucky you might be on the clock like our Mr. Chen. Life has it's ups and downs- Enjoy the ride! The International Union Of Elevator Constructors - Local 133 - Austin, Texas "We Bring You Up When You're Down"