Ways not to make enemies: Five rules of elevator etiquette

There are many ways to make enemies in the world of college.

Some are simpler than others,… There are many ways to make enemies in the world of college.

Some are simpler than others, but none is easier at Pitt than violating the unwritten but revered laws of elevator etiquette. While not totally intuitive, the rules that govern how to handle oneself in a small, vertically moving metal box are still an important part of the cultural mores that one must master before being comfortable in a city with almost as many elevators as days of rain.

1. Remember why the elevators are there.

This rule is first because it’s the most important. Elevators, we have a tendency to forget, are actually in buildings for people who do not have the physical wherewithal to go up stairs. Secondarily, in tall buildings, they are there for people going to floors to which it would be impractical to walk. Lastly, they are there for people who don’t feel like walking. Figure out which group you’re in, and adjust your need to get on the elevator accordingly.

Since you probably don’t know where everyone else is going, the most important thing to do is make sure you are appropriately courteous to anyone who needs to use the elevator if you really just want to use it. If you’re a healthy, able-bodied person and you’re waiting in the William Pitt Union, Posvar Hall, Sennott Square or another not-so-tall building, then you don’t need an elevator. If you’re going to a floor less than 10 in the Cathedral of Learning, you don’t need the elevator. You might like one, but you don’t need one, and other people probably do. If you’re going to the top of the Cathedral, then you need an elevator, but you need one less than someone with a broken leg.

2. There are some floors to which you should not take an elevator.

This is probably the easiest way to get people to hate you. Picture this: you’re in the Cathedral, and you’ve just walked all the way from Langley Hall, and your feet are tired. Your class is on the third floor, but you figure those stairs might hurt your precious toes, so you get into the crowded, tiny elevator, with 20 or so of your closest strangers, and you hit the button labeled three. There are now 20 people who hate you.

It’s worth noting that their hate is proportional to the number of floors you took the elevator, and how high the machine goes. So if you repeat the above scenario with the 36-floor elevator in the Cathedral and you taking it from the ground floor to the first floor, don’t expect to get out of the box alive.

What’s the guideline, then? Glad you asked. It’s pretty simple math, actually. Take the number of floors in the building. Divide by three. That’s the lowest floor at which it is acceptable to take the elevator. So that means you should walk 12 flights in the Cathedral? No, because the elevators there (the ones to which this applies) go to 18. So you can take the elevator to floor six. Any lower and you should bust out those climbing shoes. The Union has 10 floors. So three is an acceptable elevator trip, but two and one are not. See?

In exceptionally low buildings (Sennott Square, Engineering Hall, etc.), there’s really no one who doesn’t take the damn things, so just make sure that you’re not keeping someone in a wheelchair from getting into the elevator before you take it one flight of stairs.

3. Cell phones bad.

Seriously, there is nothing more obnoxious than forcing everyone in a small room to listen to one-half of your exceptionally loud and inane conversation about the party you went to last night. Okay, there are more obnoxious things, but that’s in rule number four. When at all possible, kill the cell phone before you get on the elevator. That frees you up to make delightful elevator small talk or at least stand there in polite silence, and it shows that you respect your fellow travelers enough to do for them what you wish they would do for you.

Of course, sometimes you have to keep talking. If the phone call is of real consequence — the fact that there was this total hottie at the party is not real consequence — then continue the conversation as unobtrusively as you can, at a reasonably low volume. And try not to laugh; people will just be reminded that you’re having more fun than they are.

4. The other people in the elevator do not care about your personal/sex life.

This is a big one. Your personal life is called that for a reason. When people are forced to be in close proximity with you for a short time, talking about it with the one person you know in the elevator, at length and in detail, is awful. It makes everyone else ill. Don’t do it.

Clever euphemisms do not excuse this. They’re not as clever as you think, everyone still knows what you’re talking about, and they hate you more for trying to be sneaky and failing. One of my worst memories at Pitt is of being crammed in for a 36-floor ride, smelling the different brands of shampoo used that morning by the spiky-haired moron and bouncy ditz in front of me. Then, the boy-band wannabe continued a conversation that had presumably begun before they were under my chin, about the girl’s encounter the previous night at a party, using terrible code words for raunchy behavior. About the time he said “So you like to peel the string cheese?” with about a dozen floors to go, I contemplated suicide. Don’t be that guy.

5. When someone violates the above rules, try to keep things in perspective.

Your time’s not as important as you think it is. Yes, it is incredibly annoying when you want to take an elevator to the fourth floor and three people get on, all pressing buttons lower than yours. But really, what were you going to do with that extra 45 seconds? Play more XBox? Sleep? Wander aimlessly? Chances are it’s not the difference in your day.

And yes, it’s obnoxious to hear people yammer away and force you into consciousness of things you’d rather not know about, but they’re probably not worse things than you do on any given day. And there’s always the chance that the person committing those sins is actually a very nice, down-to-Earth, well-meaning person who just didn’t read this column and so has no idea that there are rules.

In any case, hatred based on such a peccadillo is usually not worth the effort you have to put into hating someone. Save the enmity for people who really deserve it; there are more than enough.