There is probably, and I say “probably” half-heartedly (but that whole-heartedly), probably nothing more frustrating than people and their bizarre elevator behaviour.  Sometimes someone will get off, become confused, get back on, and then explain to everyone who just witnessed their unassailable asininity that “that wasn’t my floor” or “oh I guess that wasn’t the eighth”, as though now their behaviour is permissible because they acknowledged it with a wry half-smile.  Think again.

It was quite obvious when you stepped out of the elevator for but three seconds before returning that you hadn’t conducted your business– and how presumptuous of you to insist that I perhaps thought so.  Unless the business you had to carry out was to pass wind in the general area of HR before moving on upstairs, this fact is clear.

Sometimes people refuse to properly spread themselves out: there is an unspoken rule in an elevator: like particles of gas that expand their territories to fill their container with a uniform density, so too do humans spread themselves about an elevator.  Imagine walking into an elevator where three people were clustered awkwardly in the south-western quadrant?  Such a thing is highly unlikely.

Sometimes when there is a mass exodus, you will occassionally be left in a corner, with a single companion.  And somehow, this single companion is not “filling the void,” as it were: he still stands strangely close to you, despite the market flood of property in the area previously owned by those who exited on the sixth.  He is not spreading himself out.  He is not respecting the principle of uniform density.  And this is intolerable.

But the very worst infraction, the most unforgivable, is the senseless time spent shortly after getting on to a “down” elevator.  Many elevators do not have parking garages and find their lowest floor to be the concourse level.  And this is the level the vast majority of people will get off at.  Yet, for some reason, for some unknown goddamn reason, people getting on to the down elevator immediately run to number panel– is it not obvious at once that you are in an elevator with others?  Dear complete fucking idiot, is it not equally obvious that, so long as there is someone else in the elevator, and that elevator is going down, and your destination is the bottom floor, there is absolutely no logical, no rational, no excusable reason for you to be standing around staring at the panel of numbers?  What could you possibly conclude?  For fuck sake, stop embarrassing yourself and retarding the uniform density principle by stuffing yourself where you don’t belong.  Indeed, if you’re getting off at the bottom floor, you will never have to push a button if you are in the presence of someone else: you must only start thinking when you are alone.  Shame on you.

How often do you see someone get on the down elevator, mosey on over, all curious, all interested, all ready-for-action, over to the number pad, and see, as though it was unexpected, that someone had already set the elevator’s course to the desired coordinate?  Oh, well, excuse me, hey everyone!, gather around: a new captain has boarded the ship.  Well then, everyone, let’s take a moment to christen Lord Captain Elevator Fucking Moron the III.  At this point, the asshat will usually start smashing the door-close button — despite the fact that everyone is aware that it doesn’t speed anything up — in an attempt to wrench out some sort of reason supporting why they approached the control system to begin with.  Oh, we’re not to believe you’re an incoherent fuckwit, no sir, we’re to believe that you’re so important because you’re in a hurry, and in such a hurry that 1.5 seconds shaved off this elevator ride is worth the effort you’re putting into pressing that non-functioning button not once or twice, but several times, in rapid succession?  Is such urgency required when, really, and we all know it, you’re actually just making a non-verbal argument to all those watching about why it’s excusable that you have fucked up our uniform density and shanghai’d the navigation system?

Thankfully, we know better.