I think a lot of people unconsciously see the stairs as a fallback method to the elevator. Stairs in a commercial building are usually minimally decorated. They're "the fire escape."
The stairs in my office building are alarmed on the ground floor and only open on the 5th and 10th floors (from the stairs side).
In a lot of local buildings where I live the doors are locked from the stairwell side on every floor and locked from the outside at ground level. So you can use them to go down during a fire, but you can't use them to go up.
Yeah. Having been locked in stairwells before (luckily not for too long) I don't usually take the stairs unless they are out in the open.
Unless you're strength training. In which case, you may not care to climb the stairs as they don't really further your goals.
If you are squatting heavy, as you should be doing if you are training with the goal to increase your overall strength, walking up a couple floors shouldn't be too hard of a task and I am pretty sure there are more benefits to it than it would hurt your other goals.
I can attest to the fact that stairs are a breeze to climb if you're squatting heavy, and I'm not even squatting that heavy.
Stairs are a breeze to climb if you are even moderately fit. (Even climbing stairs will make you fit enough to climb stairs.)
Just climb them faster (=more power), and make it HIIT.
What if you going up say 3 stairs at once with every step? Fair bit of power required from the legs.