Lifts, Courtesy etc.

I do not use steps, keeping aside the health benefits of climbing up and down those plethora of steps, these benefits are as applicable to me as morals would be to most politicians, I prefer those little glass and metal enclosures which move up and down at a call of a button, we call them lifts, no?

Observing people in lifts is a great stress buster; it takes you into newer worlds with a greater insight into psychology, if it ever existed.

Yours truly considers himself to be pretty good at observation and has come up with a good classification of the lift users under which the above mentioned could be easily elaborated upon.

· The callers, classification on how people call the lifts.
· The people who board, classification on how people board the lift
· The people who alight,

The callers:

Among other boring types, the most interesting fall into two categories:

The go getters: These people are those who are not too comfortable with the idea of things not in their control. Let’s see the following conversation near a lift:

She: blah blah blah blah (continuously pressing the lift button).
He: (after a long hiatus) darling! Why are we pressing the call button so many times? my PM told me its enough if we press the button twice or thrice.
She: Oh! You dumbo! (Speaking as she presses the button continuously) you don’t know? The more the number of times you press the button the faster the lift comes down.
He: Ooooh! I never knew this.

She has got her ex-boyfriends in the lifts logic design team of OTIS, Mitsubishi and the likes and they apparently discuss, in their annual meeting they have with her, how they are thriving to increase the acceleration of the lifts with each increment in the call count.

The just do it types: These types believe that whatever they do is right.

She: blah blah blah (as she presses both up and down call button for the lift)
He: Hey! Why did you press both the buttons? Isn’t it enough to press just the down arrow button, as we are going down?
She: Are you nuts? The second button is given as back up, if the lift doesn’t come for the first button, then we have to press the second button; up and down my foot, huh!

That’s it; another name has been added to the world’s most enlightened souls’ list. This guy is lucky, isn’t he?

In the meanwhile they board the lift that is going in the opposite direction; her logic was simple- everything that goes has to come back.


The people who board:
The Hollywood type: This type is mostly inspired by Neo, the matrix man (Keanu Reaves) and believes that lifts are just another element of nature that would act according to their whimsy. When this type sees the lift at a considerable distance and when they decide to board it, all they do is just march towards the lift sternly and mechanically with a defiant palm lifted into the air.

This type would succeed unless there is a similar kind already in the lift, who on seeing the first person would press the “door close” button and smiling at the thought of the person crashing at the lift door.

The Indian fast bowler type: This type starts running towards the lift as and when they see it open, the distance just doesn’t matter, they just run with all the conviction of a determined soul, as the people waiting in the lift speculate about their chances of making it, they either run out of their steam and settle in the nearest sofa or change their mind and go towards the staircase.

The people who alight:
Before talking about this type, now that you have reached this far, I presume that you are either not too interested in life or you are too interested in what I write, in either way, I presume that you would not go away to read other intelligent posts on the forum as I quote Aristotle from his work on political philosophy

“If there be some one person whose virtue is so pre-eminent that the virtues of all the rest admit of no comparison with his, he or they can be no longer regarded as part of a state; for justice will not be done to the superior. Such a one may truly be deemed a God among men; and for men of pre-eminent virtue there is no law—they are themselves a law. Any (person) would be ridiculous who attempted to make laws for them.”

Aristotle in the above message is referring to super heroes, the icons who are above all the law and are considered demigods, a good examples for this is our security, there are at least a dozen such super heroes in our security, these do-gooders, with all due respect for keeping us in safe hands, just need a small reason to scowl at, you forget you tie, they scowl, you try to use the umbrella till the bus, they scowl after all they are super heroes and their managers have told them that smiling is a crime and courtesy is a sin.

I have met one such super hero in the last seat of the bus yesterday(this time it’s an employee); the super hero was engrossed in the music his i-pod is beaming out, with his unbuttoned shirt showing his jewelry and a few things that are beyond description for this point, he just couldn’t wait till his chance to alight the bus, he has a word for his rescue “excuse me” which he used with generosity as he made his way through the people whom he think are going to XYZ phase 3

I have later realized that this guy is the Dark-Knight of [please insert your company name here], who is in a hurry to encounter Joker who was troubling [your company's employees], asking them why they were serious.

“Excuse me” gentleman, are you reading this?

Back to the topic, it is interesting to observe the super hero category in the lifts, especially when the lift is packed, they do not have enough time to wait for their chance, their aim is simple, be the first one get out of the lift as the others are waiting to go into underground using lift.