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Comment by pflenker | Hacker News Reader

We’re all obsessing here about the door close button while a surprisingly large number habe trouble understanding the up/down buttons. Surprisingly often, especially elderly people seem to think „if the elevator is currently above me, I have to push „down“ because I want it to go down to pick me up“.

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That's a pretty funny but insightful perspective tbh. It shows a good ability to spatially reason. Or maybe it reflects the way certain people view technological devices - they issue direct commands, rather than tell it what they want and let it figure out how to do it.

This reminds me about how humans may naturally think of numbers in logarithms[1] and the way we teach math is a lot of pushing back against that intuition and getting people to think about it the unintuitive way

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-natural-log

Imperative versus declarative.

Another common occurrence that makes me mad is people who want to go UP entering an elevator that's going DOWN, when the downward traveling elevator stops due to some people (coming from the upper floors) exiting it.

I've done that during exceptionally busy times, like dorm moving day. If I wait for the elevator to be going my way on its return, it will already be full and I'll be left standing in the hall.

Of course, I think everyone's probably done it at least once simply due to inattentiveness.

I'm confused. Elevator is going DOWN. Person wants to go UP. Presses UP button and elevator stops and lets someone off (not in response to a call). Person who wants to go UP doesn't notice it wasn't a call response and gets in elevator and notices it is going DOWN. Waits the entire DOWN cycle and then presses desired floor button. Elevator is now in UP mode.

What's the problem?

The problem is that they unnecessarily increase the crowdedness, and make it more complicated for people to get out on the lower floors.

Also if there are multiple elevators, the one you actually called might stop unnecessarily.

Overall it's the same amount of stops regardless whether you take the right or the wrong one. But for some reason being in an elevator that stops without anyone getting in or out irks me.

That logic will indeed get you into the elevator faster, though.

How do you they know if the elevator is currently above them? Most elevators from my experience don't show the current floor they're on.

In my experiences, there's often an indicator above the elevator. Not always though, and I don't use elevators much.

A lot of buildings down have floors under floor #1 so its always above you

This might be a regional thing but the only times I’ve ever seen a lift without an indicator has been in glass lifts.

I've seen it fairly frequently in residential buildings in Toronto. Usually the main floor has a current floor indicator but often the other floors don't. Minor cost savings probably?

The residential elevators here in Japan always show the floor the elevator is currently on. They also have a monitor showing who (or what) is inside the elevator car, so you're not surprised when the door opens. (The monitor isn't always on each floor though, but always on the ground floor.) They also have a "pet" button so dog owners can warn people they have an animal in the elevator.

What about going down though (reception/lobby)? Is it 1, 0, B, -1? I've traveled a lot and any of them can be correct.

At least in the US, there's a star symbol next to the exit floor label on any remotely modern elevator system.

Most ones I've seen here in Finland (and Scandinavia generally, perhaps most of Europe) it's coloured green. Like exit (and emergency-exit) signs, to show “this is the way out of the building”.

And before anyone goes raging about “ableism against the colourblind!”, that's usually much darker than the rest of them, so it stands out anyway.

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