going up!

i have to take an elevator daily in my life and it really surprises me that some people act like they've never ridden an elevator before! just like when you get on a plane, there are silent elevator rules that you have to go by and that you should know of if you live in this world...do us all a favor and adhere to some of them to make our lives all a little better...mmkay? O-K!

• hold the door for people who are rushing towards the elevator. it is not funny when the other person gets to the elevator and it closes right on their face and you're standing there with a dumb look on your face like you had no power in holding the [<||>] button.

• do not take the elevator up one flight of stairs--or even up four flights of stairs. you can do it. that applies for going down too.

• if and when the elevator gets crowded, do not spread your legs apart, puff up your chest, or put your fifty pound backpack to your side, and attempt to take up more space than you really need. i can see that you might be uncomfortable that these total strangers are now in your personal space but please, we're all just trying to get to our destination as fast as we can and we would love it if we didn't have to wait another ten minutes just to be shoved out of the next elevator.

• when an elevator arrives, let the other people who are already on the elevator, get out before you rush in. you are not invisible and people cannot walk through you. 

• don't fart in the elevator when you're alone in there, because oxygen goes into the elevator, but nothing really ever goes out until the doors open, meaning that you might have farted when it was going down from the 20th floor, but the person getting on from the 10th floor will still smell it. like i said before in my other posts, your mother is lying to you--your farts do not smell pretty.

• stays true to sickness as well. no one will blame you if you get sick; it happens. but since elevators seem to get smaller and smaller each century, please don't cough on other people or sneeze a rainstorm on the person next to you. just because we don't have an immediate reaction does not mean that we didn't feel it, but that we're just trying not to be rude and spray ourselves with antibiotics.

• if there is no space in the elevator for you to reach over and push the button for your floor, then say politely "11th floor, please." ten times out of ten, the person closest to the buttons will push it for you if it's not already pushed. do not reach over everybody and go push the button like no one's business. once it's lit, it's not going to make the elevator go faster if you push the button fifty times at once.

• keep your voices down, especially if you're speaking another language. it's a metal box we're all standing in and much to your surprise, it might echo or amplify your voice. despite what you think, people around you are not all that interested in how you broke up with your boyfriend/girlfriend and what you ate for dinner last night and how your doctor told you that everything down there looks nice.

• because its easy to be less than a palm's distance away from someone, it automatically makes it easy to see what the other person is saying through text or via email. don't do that! thats sooo obnoxious when you're being nosy in a place where you really don't have the right to be nosy. thank god most elevators are a 360° mirror nowadays. don't be fishy. we're watching...