Going Up: Elevators

weeks ago. Jerry has been stuck and rescued from an elevator. Jerry, it turns out, was stuck in an elevator, a crowded elevator for four hours, crowded with the NASCAR people, as it turns out, Yeah, NASCAR fans who were in town for a race, I guess right. And she had to get rescued through the top through the top. Yeah, which we learned from this research. You can't get yourself out through that top because it's bolted on the other side. Yeah, you gotta have someone come. It's for them to get

you out, not for you to get yourself out. Sorry. John McClean, Yeah, what you did is impossible. And there weren't even bolts on his then he just like kicked it up exactly. I think there was like a screen. Yeah, this ended up being way more interesting than I thought. Well, let's get to the interesting stuff. Okay, So chuck um, we can begin to begin by talking about elevators and

who invented them. Yes, and it should come as no surprise because if I had a dime for every time we sat in the studio and said it started in ancient Rome, it seems like everything started in ancient Rome or China. Um. But in ancient Rome they did use um you could call an elevator. It was a lift. Yeah, it's not like an enclosed elevator, but it was you know, like a platform with pulleys that they would lift things up. Especially doing the work of an elevator, they used people

livestock water screws, which means Archimedes was involved, that's right. Yeah, you know and of a friend in New Jersey, a bartender who when you would ask what the score of the game was a football game, he would just breathe by and go lion stand Christians, nothing, no matter who was playing. This one of those bartender jokes. You know. He'd imagine he said it a million times and probably got it from someone else. Just an aside. Well, but we're talking about as far back as UM three six PC.

Archimedes was in ancient Greek, the Syracusian maybe, Yeah, he was from Syracuse, Orange Orange, um and uh So, elevators and the concept in the functioning elevator has been around for a very long time. Um. It wasn't until the nineteenth century, though, that they really started to take shape in a way that we see them now. They were basically just these platforms that lifted you up and you needed an ox. I think we should talk about Louis. Um which one is he x V man I always

get that backwards. He's not a super bowl. Yeah. King Louis he had what some people say it was the first modern type elevator with his flying chair. It was on the outside of her Sailles and his mistress. It was built for Madam the Chateau rou Um. This sounds like a made up name. No, that was her name, and she lived up on the third floor and would go sit in her little box and lower herself down

right to the king's balcony. Um and they would do the devil's business and it was very, um, very convenient for him. He also had flying tables at dinner that would uh lower food right at his chair like a dumb waiter. A really dumb waiter, and he would, you know, clap his hands, I guess, and call for the flying table, which bring bringing bring me another guinea hen yeah, I love guinea hens um dumb waiter, by the way, it's a pretty insensitive term for that thing. Sure, you know.

And lazy Susan, what's out all about? That's very derogatory. Did you know that lazy Susan was supposedly invented by a Chinese American restaurant tour at Chinese restaurants, that's where they're invented named Susan. Did you know that that it was invented in a restaurant, in a Chinese restaurant, and like San Francisco and like the fifties or forties, it

doesn't but that's what it's used for. So it's uh, is that some revelations, Okay, I would have guessed like like it was invented around the same time as and by the same people as who invented like the butter Church time frame, is what you were remarked. I thought the Chinese restaurant kind of threw me off to the whole thing. So at any rate, elevators have been around for a while. What are the fift it's got clever.

He had one that used the system of ropes and pulleys, which conceivably his flying chair was conceivably the first elevator, the first modern elevator ever built. But it wasn't until the nineteenth century, like I said, that they started to really take shape. And they still had like the kind that were used for industrial purposes like for mining or store houses or things like that. Um, but then passenger elevators really started to take shape. The problem was they

were extraordinarily dangerous. People died. A lot of people died if you had a rope system, a rope system, cable system, or tension system. Those are three names for the same thing, which basically uses a pulley and a rope to lower and raise a box that used stand in and your human being. That's that kind of elevator, as opposed to a hydraulic pistons system, which is what they used pre

industrial revolutions, which makes a lot of sense. Now I'm sorry they used it posted industrial revolution, but pre rope and pulley system modern elevator the kind we see now. Yeah, but you couldn't have a very tall building because you're your piston had to draw down, and if you wanted to go up, you had to draw that thing down just as far. Yeah, the piston had to be as tall as the floor of the tallest floor of the building. And then yeah, you had to have that pit that

was equally deep. Right, that's right, that's a deep pit if it's a tall Building's right, it's not so we so yes, that is a little segue that humanity took with the piston or hydraulic elevator, and apparently they were still um popular in mansions. And have you ever seen the movie Lady in a Cage. Uh, it's a black and white movie with the Jimmy Khan overacting like a crazy as a hoodlum in like the fifties. Um, And I can't remember the name of the famous star who's

the woman in the cage. But the cage is an elevator that's trapped between floor in our mansion and things go really badly for it's a good movie. Not have to check that out. Um. But the rope and pulley system, the reason why it didn't become the modern elevator until the eighteen fifties is because there was no safety mechanism, those ropes would break, and like you said, a lot of people died because the whole thing we just go all the way down to the of the shafts and

kill everybody on board. There's nothing to stop it, which is uh, some people's greatest fear is being on And we'll get to that stuff later, like what might happen? Yes, we will teaser. But along came a guy named Elijah Otis,

whose last name you might recognize. Yeah, in eighteen fifty two, he and his sons, uh said, you know what these things need, They need a safety device some people don't die, and so they created and debuted very famously the safety Hoist the fifty four New York World's Fair when he dramatically got in and said, cut the rope, and they cut the rope and it fell like a foot and then the safety device break and everyone went, wow, that's awesome.

It worked, that's right, And it's like it was attested on a spring and as long as the rope was tense, the spring would stay tripped, tripped, no untripped. And then when the tension was released, because the rope is no longer there, the spring will go and those the breaks like you said, would come out, and that's basically still in use today. A lot of elevators like this thing that he created in eighteen fifty two. It's it's they

still build it into brand new elevators today. Yeah, some of them they'll have uh, you know, it's a notch, notches cut into the railing that guides the elevator. So when those little things spring out, it just clicks into the next notch. Some wedges go into them and they can't go any further. And you're like, oh, man, thank God for Elijah Otis and his sons. Right. So a lot of people say, well, Elijah Otis invented the elevator,

the modern elevator. He did not. Actually, he invented the safety mechanism, invented the non killing elevator that that allowed rope and pulley systems to become ubiquitous and used in all sorts of buildings for people to trust them. And so he probably created the modern elevator industry is a better way to put it. Yeah. I mean he formed an elevator company and the Otis brothers and did pretty well with it. But there was another Yeah, he's dead,

but his company's doing great. Yeah, I think like eight percent of elevators or Otis elevators. But he's dead. He's very much dead. He this was well over a hundred and fifty years ago. There's another Otis who is contemporaneous to Elijah Otis, but his first name was Otis Otis Toughs. Yeah, what are the chances? Apparently pretty high? Yeah, so this

Otis Toughs fella. He actually invented what we would recognize as the first modern elevator a couple of years before Elijah Otis got his patent on his safety mechanism, and it was basically a car, yeah, with automatically opening and closing doors. There were benches, which all of the early elevators had, which apparently we'll get too later, is why we all face forward? Yeah, well sure, that's one reason,

and just to not be weird it's another one. But he had a really good idea that was extraordinarily safe. The Otis um tufted. His elevator was basically had a hole going through the middle that was threaded, and so his elevator acted like a nut that was going around a very long screw that went from top to bottom. That's what the elevator went up on. So I guess you would turn the screw and the thing would probably be pulled down or pulled up, and it would it would.

There's no safety issues whatsoever. But it was very impractical because it was very expensive. And again, this screw would have to be at least as tall as the building. That's a that's a big yeah. So he was not able to sell a lot of them. He did, okay, but it wasn't widely adopted because it was just impractical. Everybody yeah and said, hey, these Otis brothers have really got it going on because they're safe, they're efficient, and we can scale this out. You know, it's a scalable product. Um.

So that's the story of how the elevator came to be. Yeah, that's the end of that one, right, all right, Well, right after this break, we are going to talk a little bit about safety mechanisms and why you don't faulter your death now. All right, So we talked a little bit about some of the safety, but let's talk a little bit about the how an elevator works. UM. Modern elevators use a cable system where the cable is looped

over a sheave. It's very simple actually, and I say cable, but several cables, uh, and it is just has a grooved rim surface the sheep does. And it's just basically there's a counterweight on the other side. Elevator goes up, counterweight goes down. Elevator goes down, counterweight goes up. Each of those cables, by law, is required to be able to hold the elevator fully loaded plus and by itself. But there's still like four to seven eight cables usually

per elevator car. So you would have to have all of those eight snap in order to put yourself even in the slightest bit of danger. But that's when other fail safes come into play to help you from dying. Right, So you're the elevator cables are not going to snap pretty much ever, because not only are there um all of these extra cables, there elevator inspectors who examine the cables to make sure there's nothing wrong with them, and he's like, seven of these are shot, but you still

got the one, so it's fine. Um, So it's the cable snapping is not going to be a problem. But if if all of the cables did snap, if somebody got up there and cut through them within a seedling torch. Let's just say that happened you you the car, the elevator car would basically fall about two ft because remember we talked about that thing that was invented by Elijah Otis that's still in use today. Well, there are some

things that are UM connected to governors. The cables that are bolted to the top of the car and run through the sheave, which is basically a giant pulley. They also go through a governor speed governor, and when that governor starts spinning really fast, which tells it that that the cables are spinning really fast, it automatically trips those wedges which go into the grooves into the rail that the

elevator car runs on. So it'll fall about two feet. Yeah, and that's if it has I mean, there are different kinds of breaking systems, but that is certainly one. Another one is uh this kind of um break shoe basically that goes around the rail like a roller coaster, right and then um when the governor pulley senses that it's spinning too fast, it trips those and they just gripped the rail. Either way, you're gonna fall just a feet

a foot or two. Yeah, And I don't think we said that this is it's an electric motor that spins the sheath that pulls the cables up and down, right, I thought that was obvious, But we should point that out. We should. And it's a pretty elegant system actually, because the counterweight and the elevator weigh fairly close to the same um. So the motor that's running the sheave only has to overcome the force of friction to basically tip the balance between the two so that whichever one is

lower will pull the other one down. So that's how an elevator goes up and down. So let's say the cables have been cut, and this diabolical villain that once you dead in a very expensive and time consuming there's a lot easier ways to kill somebody um has also somehow removed all of the safeties. That's what in elevator jargon, the safety mechanism are called safeties. That's the fact of

the podcast. Uh what happens then? So you're saying, let's you are just plummeting, you're free say free fall, But as this article points out, it's not quite freefall. Because there's gonna be friction because it is on on rails and you can't be and you're not in a vacuum. No, you're And what's more, because you're not in a vacuum, there's air beneath you, and this elevator car that is takes up most of the space and the shaft um is compressing the air beneath it, so it's creating a

cushion of air. And like you said, the friction from the rails is slowing the whole thing down. So yeah, you're not gonna enter free fall, which is where there's no force of gravity exerted on you at all. No, you're gonna be slowed down, but you're definitely gonna feel like you're falling. You know, you're gonna be moving at a of speed, a dangerous rate of speed. But at the very bottom there are shock absorbers built in. And it looks like, I mean, a big springy, spongy thing,

and that's basically what it is. It's a cylinder, uh piston filled with oil usually and so that'll help you out a little bit too, probably keep you from getting killed. Yeah, depending on where you fall from. And there's apparently one instance in the history of elevators, at least in America, that um where actually happened. Yeah, where these cars have

fallen modern elevator cars have fallen from a significant height. Um. And that was in when a Bift two bomber accidentally ran into the another World Trade Center, the Empire State Building and basically cut the cables, the safety breaks, everything on two elevator cars that dropped from the seventy ninth floor. Yeah, it's happened once, all the way down and the one woman who was a board survived. That's seventy nine floors,

that's eight h ft. It's a long way. Yeah, and that was in that was cushioning, right, you know, imagine it's a little better now. Well. One of the things that saved her though, is that she was in the corner of the car m because the cable, the elevator cable started to coil up beneath it as it fell down through the through the bottom of the car, and it was you know, she was drunk, and you know

what they say, it's a cigarette the whole drunk. Then I think your body is that a is that a misnomer that your body like can accept, Like an accident more readily if you're drunk, because it doesn't stiffen up. I've always heard that might be a wives tale. All right, So let's talk a little bit about if you are going to die or suffer a devastating injury on an elevator, chances are no, Um, you have a point zero zero ro zero zero zero zero one five percent chance of

dying on your average elevator ride. How did you come up with that number? Well, how you do any average? You multiply? Well, we don't get into the math of it. Eight billion passenger trips on elevator per year. Seven people die on average per year UM. And most of those are people that work on elevators UM repairing them. So your chances are they say, greater of getting struck and killed by lightning, and everyone knows that's not you know, you shouldn't worry about dying in an elevator. And it

says that escalators are ten times safer. That's not necessarily true. That's what the elevator people say. It depends. They did a study of senior citizens with like a median age and I think eighty years UM, and found that there were higher um, there were a higher number of um accidents on escalators, but zero fatality. He's over this fourteen year period, there's fatalities and elevator accidents. And we should say, like there's a very very slow or slim chance of

being injured in an elevator. What did you say? Point zero zero zero zero zero zero one five. That's a small chance, but it does happen. Yeah, and if you and if you do die in an elevator accident, it's gonna be pretty gnarly. Have you did you see the lady in China? Yeah? I mean, well, there's there's all kinds of stories that will put the fear of God

into you. Um. This this one lady Suzanne Heart in two thousand eleven and at Exaci, New York, stepped onto her elevator, the door closed on her, grabbed her and took off up the shaft and killed her, and not in a pleasant way. Now, that same week, a woman at cal State Long Beach had the exact same thing happened to her as she was stepping on the elevator. The car just suddenly went up and took her with it. They cut her in a half. Yeah. Wow. Um. A

nurse in China, same thing happened to her, apparently. Statistically speaking, if you're going to be injured by a malfunctioning or killed by a malfunctioning elevator, it's going to be while you're getting on or off and the thing starts moving up without you realizing that it's about to happen. Because if it does happen, it happens pretty quick. Yeah. I started since reading this, I started getting on and off of elevators for very fast. Well, that's one thing that

you should do. You should also pay attention to to your surroundings, what's going on. That's that's the problem, because getting on and off of an elevator is a pretty mindless thing to do. And as um Nick PLOWM. Gartner points out, who wrote probably the greatest article anyone's ever written on elevators in the history of humanity. It's in the New Yorker. It's called up and then Down? And how many articles did you read to compare it to just this one? Dude? I would put it up against

any other article you can come up with. There's someone out there that wrote one. This like Josh didn't even look at mine. I would read it. If they thought it compared anyway. He points out that not only is it like a mindless thing getting on and off of an elevator, we don't even think about what's going on during the elevator ride, like we our brains are basically like I'm on a leven, I get in, go through these doors, and now I get out of the doors

and I'm on. Well. Yeah, and people they've done studies like it that way. Um. Other they've thought about, hey, maybe we should um make the elevator clear so people can see what's going on, and that people round me said, no, I don't want a clear elevator. I don't want to

see those cables. I want to get in my little box and get spit out on whatever floor I pushed the button for and the whole um you know, music, Yeah, music came about to um to calm people down on elevators, to drown out the noise of the elevator mechanism working, and just to to calm people down. Yeah, because if you're elevator phobic, it means almost that you are claustrophobic and you don't like being in that small space with those people. And experts say that if you have a

big elevator fear. You just got basically your fight or flight responses being hijacked in the situation that's truly not dangerous because when that's when it's supposed to kick in. But the idea of being trapped in Jerry's case with NASCAR fans is enough to make her possibly hyperventilate and have a panic attack. Uh if she is also claustrophobic, which about five percent of people are, well, I think elevator phobia and claustrophobia overlap kinda, but they're not one

and the same right now. Okay, that's what you're saying. Yeah, okay, Um, how do you get over that? Well? I mean it could be genetic. Some people think that phobias like that our genetic. Others think that it comes from being trapped in something when you were a kid and comes out later when you could always go to the CBT route and have a doctor lock you in a small box over and over until you get used to it. I

think that's basically what they do. I think also though, um, probably the more common therapy would be exposure therapy, where you and your doctor go to the elevator down the hall in the doctor's office building, and um go up and down a couple of times. I read an l A Times article about this um, this psychologist who treated people with a fear of elevators, and she said that, you know, you start out by just looking at the elevator and then maybe getting on for a second, then

getting right back off, you know. And she said, over the course of probably about ten rides, by the tenth one, it's gone. Yeah. So it's it's true. Table it's very treatable, but it's it's I read another article in the New York Times about this woman who said, I have a phobia of elevators. That's so bad, I don't even want to confront it, Like I don't want to get over it. That's too much of a hill to climb to get to the other side, even if it just took ten

elevator rides, Like that's just too much. And people who have elevator phobia's lives are altered because of their fear of elevators, Like there's lots of places they can't work. Um, even if you work on the second floor of the building, if the buildings lock and the doors and to the stairs locked behind you, like us Yeah, then it doesn't matter if you work on the second floor. You could

only conceivably work on the first floor. Yeah. We don't have the option of taking the stairs here because I've made that mistake taking a private call on the stairwell and you get locked out, you gotta walk all the way down. Yeah. And some people, I imagine too, have fear of heights. Um. And one of my friends moms couldn't stay above like the third floor of a hotel even really yeah, I mean even when the blinds closed and everything. She just she knew she was high up

and that freaked her out. For that reason, I can't stand glass outdoor elevators. Yeah, we forgot we shot a scene. Oh that was not fun. Was that the peach tree or the inside the Marriott here? But the Marriott here is a very cool interior glass elevator that goes up really high. And um, yeah, I remember. You did a good job though. Well, yeah, it was fine on that. It was that sky car at Stone Mountain that got me. Oh did the sky bucket thing? Yeah, it just takes

you from one side of the park to the other. Yeah. Yeah, the thing that you split off of No, it's enclosed oh, the one I rode was just like a ski lift. Basically, didn't we shoot it stone one? Oh no, no, no, okay, I know what you're talking about. I thought you're talking about six flags the sky bucket. I probably wouldn't like that either. Yeah, you're talking about the the tram that takes you to the top of some mountain. It is

fully enclosed. Yes, and remember there's like a poll going through the middle that I was holding onto and just staring at the floor. Well, that's one of those things where if they have to stop it, it like swings back and forth and you're reminded, I'm hanging from a cable on a big, heavy car. Okay, So we'll talk about some elevator etiquette tips. We're gonna help you be a better human being. Apparently all right after these messages. Hey Chuck, Hey dude, we love squares space, don't we. Yeah,

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There's a couple of people that I think are awesome. Uh one. His name was Edward Hall, and he's a scientist in the nineteen sixties that invented proximics, which is basically studies how much personal space people like. And what he found out is Americans have four different categories of

personal space. Public space, which he found that people like to be twelve ft apart from one another, social space four ft, personal space a foot and a half, and then what he calls intimate space, which is um right up on somebody. Yeah. The other guy is a dude named John J. Frewan, and he wrote something in nineteen seventy one called the Pedestrian Planning and Design, uh just

called Pedestrian Planning and Design. It is the go to handbook for if you want to build a subway or if you want to build an elevator car or anything where you're squashing people together. That is still the go to for how many how many jerks can we fit in this box? Right? So that was comfortably and safely right, That was all taking in consideration and all of those things, what those are not taking the consideration on our elevator cars like they they basically go way beyond that foot

and a half of personal space. Well, yeah, it goes by weight only, right, Yeah, and if if it's a busy time, all of a sudden, you can find yourself with like an intimate space with all these other people around you in a tiny little box. So let's talk etiquette when you do find yourself in a situation like that. One really good way to prevent being in a crowded elevator car and from stopping people in an elevator car unnecessarily is following what's called the two flight rule, which

we can't do here at our office. No, we're an exception. And the reason why we're in exceptions because if we tried to take the stairs, the doors locked behind you and you're trapped in the stairwell and you have to go back down to the ground floor, which is the one door that's unlocked. Right, that's right. Why do I feel like we're helping a stalker? Like the schematics of the building, They're like, oh, that's an interesting in detail. You will regret sharing that. Do we have stockers, No,

they're all trapped in the stairwell. That's who those people are. The two flight rule is basically says that if you are going one to two flights up. Take the stairs instead of the elevator keeps people from having to wait. Yeah, well you get off a distance that you could have conceivably walked, and should for your own health walk. Another rule, Uh, they always touchy. Do you hold the door for someone or not? Um? I always think of curb your enthusiasm.

Did you ever see that one when Larry uh feigned as if he was going to hold the door open and wouldn't do it. I didn't see that one. I would have assumed that that topic would have covered like six consecutive episodes. Now he very obviously was like, oh, let me reach for this when and then of course he ends up on the same floor in the same waiting room as the girl who didn't hold the door for and I think she does it to him later,

of course, in true TV fashion. But um, the author of the thing that we read said, if if you're on the elevator by yourself, you should always hold the door open for someone. But if there are a bunch of people on there, you might want to just not do it and say, hey, get the next one. Yeah, because you don't have time to take a straw pole to see what everybody on the elevator, thinks, And you're not necessarily in charge of everybody, so you don't get

to decide if the door stays open. So the decision is you can't decide doors are closing on their own exactly. If it's a full elevator, then yeah, t s yeah. And it depends on the amount of elevators. Like we have four elevator banks in our office, and I feel like, yeah, I feel like, you know, there's gonna be another one coming very soon. Yeah, So it's not a big deal, And I don't expect anyone to hold the elevator for me.

In fact, I will say, go, don't like, reach your hand out and stop the elevators for me, which apparently is very dangerous. Um, not necessarily reaching your hand out, but jumping on an elevator with the doors closing. That's when it's that's you don't want to do that. I do that all the time. You're not. You do it, but do it at your own peril at my point zero zero zero zero zero zero one five risk. Yeah. Um,

here's something I didn't know, chuck. Um. There's you're supposed to stand in a single file line, no matter how many elevators there are that that I think that's true. Like, if you work in the Empire State building, you're going to get huge lines. But my most office buildings I don't think have lines. Depending on the size of the office building, they might have. Uh this type of elevator call system where you go up to a little keypad

or something, the dispatch system. Yeah, you type in what floor you're going to, and the computer tells you what elevator to wait for. You can only take one elevator, but the elevator is going straight to your floor and it just waits until enough people to fill it up come along, and then that sends you on your merry way. If you don't have that and you do find a line, supposedly you're supposed to stand in single line. Did not

know that, Well, it may not be true. Again, I think if you have that many people in your building to warrant a line, then yeah. But our I mean ours is pretty big and there's never like a big

crowd of people. Um, but you bring up an important point here as far as the stops go, and um, there is a term called elevator ing, which I've never heard, and that is the discipline of designing an elevator to work efficiently basically, and one of the things that they have to look for is uh probable stops and they

have actually calculated this. Um. A guy his last name is Fortune, has a probable stop table and says that if there are ten people in an elevator that serves ten floors, uh, it is going to you're gonna make six and a half stops on average. That half stuff is tricky. Ye, ten people on thirty floors nine and

a half stops. Um, So it's just interesting to think about, Like you can avoid all of that with either the the dispatch system or uh, like the World Trade Center had the sky lobby where you could take an express up to like the thirty floor, get off there and then get on the local and just go to whatever before you want to. And then that same guy, um Mr Fortune, who's an elevator consultant, one of the foremost

ones I gather from that Nick plown Garden article. He also told plown Garden that there's um you have to factor in what's called weight time, which basically in an American office building, supposedly the interval, which is the total length of time it takes for a single car to go all the way up and all the way down, divided by the number of cars. Then you have your way time that should be no more than thirty seconds, with the actual weight time being about si that are

eighteen seconds. So in an American office building, you should not have to wait for longer than eighteen seconds for an elevator. Yeah, and he's carried it one step further, which is um you want your handling capacity of the building. That is the amount of passengers the percentage of passengers of the building's population that you carry in five minutes, and he's just thirteen percent is a pretty good target. Yeah,

you want to hit that thirteen percent range. And in general, in England people are over elevateord and in places like India and China they are under elevator. Not enough elevators, yep. But in England they're allows you with them and they're just carrying one person at a time. Apparently people have like two three elevators in their house. Uh, Chuck, I have one for you. Regarding etiquette, Okay, if you are in an elevator and a man and a woman are

are exiting the elevator at the same time. Uh, should the man let the woman go first? And where are we? You are at a guar concert um and it's just the two of us. I am always one to say ladies first, But I have seen Miss Manners says in a corporate environment, you're you should treat everyone equal and not do things like ladies first and hold the door open for a lady. And I think the Manners mentor, Merrily McKee, would like us to correct. She's not Miss

Manners know, is that someone else? Yeah, she's the Manner's mentor, But she says, if you're in an office environment, people are supposed to be equal, so you don't have to let ladies go first. I say, I'm a Southern gentleman, so I do that kind of thing. If it's a crowded elevator, it's every person for themselves, like you should just get off. If you're at the front, you know, standing in front of the door, it just makes more sense.

It can easily get very clumsy and confusing and just awkward if you're like, oh well, make it out of the way, you go first. You know, that's not in the lady who probably like, who's this create that wants to get behind me exactly. Uh. And also, if you're on a crowded elevator and you are in front of the doors, the proper procedure is to step off and let people out, um, instead of just trying to wedge yourself into somebody's groin. You know, just like step off,

the same as if you're on a subway. You can get right back on. Don't worry. But I see a lot of people not doing that. I wonder why I don't. I guess they're lazy jerks. You like, Yeah, you you step off. If you're the closest of the door, you step off and you leave your hand there, your arm then get chopped off. Yeah basically yeah, I mean you're but you're leaving it. You're keeping it from closing on the people exiting, but you're also keeping closing from closing

on you. So you can get back on if you're gonna lose your place, you know, you're a martyr. Yeah. And then when you step back on, as per the rules of social norms, according to these people who study it, everyone just sort of files into the proper place. If it's just two of you, you're probably should stand you know, well, apart from each other. There's four of you, you're probably gonna migrate to the corners, and then if it gets super full, you're gonna be touching some folks. Yeah, but

normally up till five it follows the face of a die. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and you face forward and again that's supposedly because there used to be benches in the backs of elevators. It would be so weird if someone just got on and just walk straight to the back of the elevator and stood there. Yeah, like that would freak me out. I would get off that elevator. What

if they just turned around or facing you? No, no, no no, if they just got on and just walk straight and just face the back wall, I'd be off of that thing so fast because they got something up their sleeve that I don't want to be a part of. But what if they what if you were towards the back of the elevator facing front, somebody got on and stayed by the doors but just turned around it's facing you.

That's equally is creepy. And then there between you and the door, because I wouldn't even know how to get out of there safely, I'd probably bowl the dude over and then he'd be like, what's your problem? You just start crying? What about your phone? Oh? Well, I mean this is a personal thing, I guess, but I think you should never talk on the phone when you're several feet from a stranger. Barely anybody gets coverage on an elevator anyway. They just stand there on the phone the

whole time. They did we get cut off. Hello, hold on, I'm on an elevator. You say, I'll call you back. I'm on an elevator. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have my conversations in front of people either. Sure, not that they're super private, but that's just that's my biz. Sure, do you got anything else? Uh? No, I do. Um. If you've seen internet videos about did you see the one on the the train in Asia where people were just packing themselves on and like pushing people on like sardines.

Apparently in Asia there is a much much higher tolerance for personal space when it comes to subways, elevators, and getting around. Americans have many more hang ups. Well, we have a huge nation that we've spread out through and have enormous pockets of unpopulated areas. We like our land and our fences, good fences make good neighbors. That's it. I got nothing else. It's elevators pretty much. Seriously, go read up and then down by Nick plown Gartner in

the New Yorker. It's awesome. Um, and uh, you know I did have one more thing. Actually, what he makes an awesome point in there that if it wasn't for elevators, the world as we know it would not even be the same because verticality is what has allowed us to uh grow as people. Um, because if it wasn't for verticality, we could only expand outward, and there's only so much outward expansion you can do. So elevators themselves have shaped

the way mankind has has populated this world. Pretty interesting. It is interesting. Never thought about it before that way. It's an interesting article through and through, best by far article ever written on elevators. But we have plenty of articles on elevators on the site how Stuff Works. You can type elevators into the search bar there and they'll bring up a bunch of different articles. You can read those. And uh, since I said search bar, it's time for

a listener mail. I'm gonna call this you guys may have legitimately saved our son's life. Wow, right, Hey, guys, want to say thank you and tell you that it's quite possible that your show on allergies saved our son's life. Yesterday and this just came in, so this was very recent. Henry, our three year old, was playing outside and was stung by b you near the wrist on his left arm. I didn't think anything of it because he's been stung before and not appeared to be allergic with no reaction.

So I made sure the stinger was out and handed him over to my husband Uh to calm him down. Thankfully, my husband, Dustin, remember the allergy podcast you did and how you said sometimes it takes the first exposure for the body to decide if it's response to a specific allergen. So Dustin kept a close eye on Henry and noticed that the left side of his face started to swell within minutes I know. We rushed into the emergency clinic, where he received a shot of epinephrin, the dose of anahistamine,

and prescriptions for both immunosuppressants and an EpiPen. He is doing fine, back to his normal wild self, thanks to the information, your podcast and Dustin's quick thinking. The first thing Dustin said to me after leaving the clinic was you realized stuff you should know saved his life. Right, that's so cool. I know, thank you for everything you do. Guys. We always love the podcast, and now I have even

more reason to appreciate it. That is from the Becks, Dustin, Lindsay Silas, and Henry thanks Beck's permission to read it. And she asked the husband and he was like, hey, yeah, people need to get the word out on this stuff. Yeah, what's your kid after they get stung by beats? Yeah, don't just laugh at them. Yeah, I would say we didn't necessarily save anyone's life. That would be more of

the parents, Oh of course, and the medical um emergency people. Yeah, but we're glad that knowledge could kind of ease that inch it along. Yeah. So, if we've done anything that even remotely smacks of saving a life, we always love hearing about that. Believe it or not, it's happen more than once. Um. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook

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