Things that should be taught in school
Do you know the saying “Everything I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten”? Well, a lot of people don’t know some very simple things. One of my personal gripes is about incorrect elevator usage (lifts in the UK).
A little technical background on elevators – the cabins are usually counter-weighed for half the carrying capacity of the elevator. This means that the elevator will expend the least energy when carrying half the rated capacity, and the most when it’s either empty or completely full (in terms of transported weight). This is done like this so the capacity of the motor is only half of the full rated weight (an elevator rated for one ton only has to move up (if full), or move down (if empty) 500kg at most, and 0kg when there’s exactly 500kg inside the cabin.
So moving an empty elevator (especially down) is one of the most costly operations in terms of energy and wear and tear.
Unless it’s one of the new (recent) elevators where you push the floor you’re going to from the outside, most elevators have two call buttons – one for “up”, another for “down”. You press the “up” button if you want to go to a higher floor, and the “down” button if you want to go to a lower floor. Pretty simple concept, right? Why is it then that a LOT of people don’t grasp this concept? They either press the wrong button (thinking perhaps that they are commanding the elevator to come up or down to them?), or they press both buttons (in the hope that it will arrive faster). In the former mis usage, if there are other active calls on or to other floors, the consequence is that the user will go for a longer ride, going in the opposite intended direction first, taking a longer to arrive, which is mainly a problem for the passenger. On the latter case, when both buttons are pressed, the elevator(s) are being called twice, one for a trip going up, another for a trip going down. This generates a lot of unwanted stops on single elevators, and a lot of wasted empty trips on a bank of multiple elevators.
Another thing I don’t understand is when people wait for the elevator just outside the doors, having to move away when (surprise!) there are people that want to leave on that floor.
The solution, besides having “Elevator Usage 101″ in schools? 
Just a simple labeling of the buttons instead of arrows: “press this button to go up” and “press this button to go down“; and with a note stating “DO NOT PRESS BOTH BUTTONS FOR ONE TRIP” next to the call buttons, and “PLEASE LEAVE SPACE FOR EXITING PASSENGERS”. A lot of time, wear and tear, electricity, and frayed nerves would be saved by these little labels.
I think most people are egocentric fools! There…. i said it….
You learn something new every day. I did not know about the counter weight being set to half the capacity and the impact on the motor for either empty or full elevators being the same. Very interesting.
I think that part of the problem is that people try to ‘out-think’ the elevator by pressing either the opposite button than the direction they want to go or by pressing both buttons. I once worked with a person who used to work at an elevator company (Otis). That person wrote the software for elevators and told me about the logic used. It surprised me how sophisticated it was for something that could only go up and down and travel to a very limited number of stops. Being efficient with those constraints is very difficult, but when you add in the ‘bad behavior’ of some elevator users, it’s even worse.