Going Down

When I lived in London, I spent a large part of my life never having to use an elevator. In fact when I was a child, one of our small amusements on a Saturday was going on the bus to a large new shopping centre and travelling up and down in the car park lifts. Sad, I know, but true.

My apartment in London was on the first floor and, although it did have a lift, it had been broken for many years (and who really needs one in a four-storey building?). Most of the offices where I worked there either didn't have a lift, or there was no need to use it unless you were really lazy.

However, here in Hong Kong, almost everyone uses lifts several times a day, at home and at the office. Unfortunately, this brings with it many frustrations and much aggravation. Plus it gives me something to write about in my blog.

I've got used to people jabbing the lift button repeatedly in the strange belief that this will make the lift come more quickly; pushing in to the lift before people have a chance to leave. and pushing the 'door close' button rather than waiting for the doors to close. It can be quite amusing getting in to an occupied lift and not pressing the 'door close' button - someone will usually make clear their exasperation and press the button whilst looking at you as if you were an idiot.

Fumier has recently written about this, and is complaining about another thing people do.

People will press both the up and the down button and get in whichever lift comes first. They may therefore travel up 4 floors and then down 5 floors in order to go down one floor. The lift therefore makes twice as many stops, goes twice as slowly, and is full of people going in the wrong direction, thereby preventing people going in the right direction from getting in, and hence building up the backlog of passengers, and thus encouraging them to press both buttons and get in whichever lift comes first, and so on and so on.

Yes, that happens in my nearest large shopping centre. The reasoning is that the lift is often full, so it is quicker to get in whenever you have the opportunity and go down before you go up (this happens most often when there is only a single lift in a particular location).

Something else that annoys me is that everyone wants to select their floor the precise momeny they enteri the lift, rather than waiting to get inside or asking someone else to press for them. Then, of course, the doors start closing as people are still waiting to enter the lift (presumably they respond so quickly because otherwise the buttons need to be replaced very frequently).

Beyond this, we get to people who behave in a very selfish way. It seems quite rare for people to actually keep the doors open so that someone can get in to the lift, and some people actually push the 'door close' button when they see people coming to try to ensure that they are not kept waiting!

Fumier says that Game Theory explains the way individuals behave, by which I think he means that each person will do what is best for them rather than worrying about anyone else. Fair enough, but what baffles me is when security guards in buildings are instructed to do things that actually makes things worse overall.

One building where I worked had a security guard on duty from around 8.30 to 9.30 just to press the lift buttons and to hold the doors open so more people could get in. I was never convinced that this helped very much, and if they'd really wanted to do this efficiently they could have directly controlled the lift.

An even more puzzling example of this is in the industrial building where I now work. It has three passenger lifts, one for the odd-numbered floors, one for the even-numbered floors, and one for both. Like the Hopewell Centre, it has entrances at different levels. I normally enter through the main entrance on the upper ground floor, and the security guard stands there during the morning pressing both the 'up' and 'down' buttons on all three lifts. Yet I have never seen anyone get in the lift when it was going down, and if they did, it would be inefficient, as Fumier correctly points out. In spite of this, someone has specifically asked the security guards to stand there pressing the buttons. It's madness, I tell you!

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