on waiting.

Yesterday, I was on my way to a class on the fourth floor of the science building. I always take the stairs to the second floor, and if I'm feeling frisky, I might take the stairs to the third floor. But the way to the fourth floor is strictly on the elevator. There are two elevators in this particular building, each facing the other in a little area set away from the main traffic of the hallway so people can wait for their laziness ride without blocking the hall.

I arrived at the waiting area and saw two other people waiting for the elevator. So I took my place among them, situated so that I looked like I was reading the sign I'd read a thousand times before to avoid embarrassing eye contact with strangers. Sometimes the elevator takes longer than others, but after a while, I started getting impatient and turned to make the futile and irritating effort of pushing the button over and over, as if the elevator cared that I was going to be late. It indeed had been a long time, because I personally get very irritated when people repeatedly push the button. It is one in a long list of elevator behavior protocol, including taking the elevator to the second floor, trying to strike up conversations with strangers, and taking the elevator down.

When I turned to push the button, I noticed that the button was not lit up. I pushed it, it lit up for half a second, and then turned off. Immediately after, I heard that familiar ding and the elevator behind me opened. The three us of, plus two others that arrived after I did, had all been waiting on an elevator that hadn't been summoned, that was in fact there the whole time.

Ridiculous.

The same thing happens all the time when people arrive early for a class. Sometimes the class before is still in the classroom, and sometimes the door is locked, so it's not uncommon to see students sitting around in the hall five to ten minutes before the hour. If there is already a person there waiting, the people that arrive later will never check to see if the classroom is available. They'll all sit down and wait too. Then you end up with twenty students sitting in the hall outside an unlocked and empty classroom when the teacher walks up, assesses the situation and decides maybe that the tests are all going to need curves.

The problem lies in the fact that people take for granted that other people know what they're doing, and even in a higher education setting, that's a poor assumption. We assume they've tried to open the door, that they've called the elevator, that there is a reason we're forced to wait before proceeding on to the next place where we will wait some more. This entry isn't necessarily a rant that people are stupid, but just maybe that they're a little too trusting that people aren't stupid.

And then this morning, I walked behind a girl to the elevator who walked to the waiting area and stopped and stood in front of the call button without pushing it. I sighed, pushed the button, and waited.

Okay, maybe some people are just stupid.