Trapped like a bug
What with being busy with work and play I hardly have enough time reading the backlog of New Yorker articles I get referred to via blogs. How people manage to be subscribed to the New Yorker, have a television and maybe even read a newspaper is beyond me.
Anyway, this week I read this great article on elevators: “Up And Then Down”. One part in it was particularly enlightening:
Helplessness may exacerbate claustrophobia. […] In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. […] Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer.
This explains many interactions I have had with elevators over the course of my life where this button never worked and where I always wanted it to work, immediately. I hadn’t really considered this explanation blaming it mostly on shoddy engineering or interface design—which it of course also is.
About the culture of riding an elevator and the politeness norms, I think most of those are lost on the Dutch. But that’s another story.
