The Otis Elevator Company, the world's oldest and biggest elevator manufacturer, claims that its products carry the equivalent of the world's population every five days. As the world urbanizes - every year, in developing countries, sixty million people move into cities - the numbers will go up, and up and down.
Everything you could possibly want to know about
elevators or lifts. Like...
Passengers seem to know instinctively how to arrange themselves in an elevator. Two strangers will gravitate to the back corners, a third will stand by the door, at an isosceles remove, until a fourth comes in, at which point passengers three and four will spread toward the front corners, making room, in the center, for a fifth, and so on, like the dots on a die. With each additional passenger, the bodies shift, slotting into the open spaces. The goal, of course, is to maintain (but not too conspicuously) maximum distance and to counteract unwanted intimacies - a code familiar (to half the population) from the urinal bank and (to them and all the rest) from the subway. One should face front. Look up, down, or, if you must, straight ahead. Mirrors compound the unease. Generally, no one should speak a word to anyone else in an elevator. Most people make allowances for the continuation of generic small talk already under way...
Which does make me think of one thing that's been omitted.
Best ever elevator scene:
You gentlemen aren't REALLY trying to kill my son, are you?
From
here. (Via
A&L Daily.)