After pressing the 1 button to take me down two floors I pushed another button labed ">I<". It was the close door button on the elevator.
Nothing happened.
Finally, nearly 6 seconds after pressing the button to shut the doors, the elevator reacted and closed up. I did not regard the pause immediately but on the long 20 second ride down the reality of what had just happened hit me. "It must have been a fluke," I thought to myself.
When I reached my floor the doors opened and immediatly I decided to try closing the doors via the button again. After a swift push, the result was only an open door leading to a marble hallway. And there I was. Sitting befuddled and alone in an elevator that had been installed with a fake close door button. It was then I realized that because this elevator had this defect, all elevators must be the same.
So next time you enter an elevator with the sincere intentions of closing the doors before the 6 second time limit forces the procedure- know that you will only be made a fool and that the world is not quite what it seems.
Chad
3 comments:
Very good observation. When that guy got stuck in the elevator a while back the New Yorker had an awesome article all about elevators that was riddled with facts about them. That was one of them:
"...manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. 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. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) 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"
Article:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all
List of Facts from the article:
http://gizmodo.com/380741/things-you-dont-know-about-modern-elevators
Haha! Great advice, Chad. I will never press one of those blasted buttons again.
Chad! Read my last blog. Tag. You're it.
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