a bit ranty today ...
I work three floors up in a building which has double-height ceilings, so I’ve been collecting lift-rants for a while now.
Rant the first:
Why do people feel the need to apologise when they use the lift? As I said, three floors up. Double height ceilings. That means six flights of stairs to get to my office. Of course I’m taking the lift! Yet almost every time someone gets into the lift with me they say, “I’d take the stairs, but …” and then make some excuse, like ‘this bag’s really heavy’ or ‘I’ve been on my feet all day’.
Have we really become so insecure about our exercise levels that we feel the need to justify not climbing six flights of stairs a couple of times a day, not only to ourselves, but to other people who aren’t doing it either?
Rant the second:
Why, when some people are waiting for the lift, do they stand right in front of the doors, blocking them so that people inside the lift can’t get out? A number of people in my building use wheelchairs. There are also various post- and tea-trolleys moving around the place. All of these need a good bit of space to get out of the lift, yet I often see people standing waiting for the lift with their nose practically pressed against the doors. Then they look surprised when they have to move back to let people out.
Rant the third:
And for some reason this is the one that really gets up my nose - why do some people not know how lifts work? Our building has 5 floors - Basement, Ground, 1, 2 & 3. The lift has 2 buttons - up and down. It also has a display telling you which floor the lift is on currently, but this is a modern development - all lifts work the same way whether or not they have this kind of display.
Now this is the crucial bit - if I want the lift to work properly, I have to tell it what I want to do, not what I want it to do. If the lift is on floor 3 and I’m on the ground floor wanting to go up, I need to press the ‘up’ button, not the ‘down’ button. Think about it. The lift ‘knows’ it’s on floor 3. A soon as I press the button on the ground floor, it knows it has to come down to get me. What it doesn’t know - what I need to tell it - is what I want to do next. That’s why there are two buttons. If I press the ‘down’ button, and someone in the basement (which only has an up button, incidentally) also calls the lift, it will stop for me on the ground floor, then carry on down to the basement. However if I’ve pressed the ‘up’ button, it’ll go to the basement first, then stop for me on the way back up.
All this seems quite logical to me, but about half the people I work with press the down button in this situation, and are then surprised when they end up in the basement.
~~~
Unrelated fanfic rant:
Is it me, or is it a bit out of order for someone to join a fanfic community - which is not a challenge community - announce that they don’t write, and immediately issue a ‘challenge’ which is basically just a personalised story request?
Isn’t that akin to walking into a writers’ group and saying, “Here’s the story I want you to write …”?
I’ve nothing against non-writers issuing challenges per se - they can throw up some interesting ideas - but I think they need to establish themselves a bit in the community first, say by giving some interesting feedback or participating in discussions.
Or is this perfectly acceptable behaviour in fandom?
Right. I'm glad that's off my chest. Now I can write.