The intelligence of people using the elevator at work seems to drop on a daily basis. First, although work happens to be inside a hospital, I assure you these people are not sick, at least they don't appear so. And yet they are confounded by the workings of our elevators.

The first problem is pushing the button. The buttons are arranged in, I admit, a possibly confusing way. Each button has a circular metal piece next to it that has the floor number as a numeral and in braille, embossed in metal, and does look enough like a button that I would not immediately hate someone who pushed it first. But when one sees the other circle light up, because I have just pushed it on the other button panel, I think that should be enough of a clue. Nonetheless, people continue to stare and try to press the non-button. Apparently they sometimes try pretty hard, because some of the non-buttons have actually been pushed into the panel. On one occasion, after seeing that I had been successful in requesting a floor, a woman decided that perhaps the button panel she had been trying was not good enough, and came over to the one I had used instead.

Once one has gotten past pushing the button, there is the difficult task of getting off at the right floor. It's a common occurrence to try to get off prematurely, because every floor looks very similar, without clear labels in the elevator bank. But a few days ago one woman went way beyond this. We had gotten on in the basement, and I had pushed 3, she 1. The door opened at 1 and she made no movement. Then to 2 where someone else got off. On the way to 3 she looked back at me and said "Ahm..." I didn't want to get involved so I managed a good blank stare, and walked quickly off at 3. I think by that point she was beginning to get the picture.

Considering that 3 of the elevators in the building traverse a total of 3 floors, and the other 5 cover 4 including the basement, I think those not infirm but unable to handle the intricacies of elevator travel should simply take the stairs. I do sometimes, but I'm unable to go down stairs without going extremely fast and 2 at a time, and in the morning when I haven't reached full agility this seems dangerous.