At the mall in which my office is located, there is a dire shortage of elevators during peak hours. You wait, wait, wait and they are full when they arrive. It's very frustrating, but at least it is acknowledged as an acceptable excuse for being late for work, as well as macet (traffic jams), because everyone in the office knows the perils of elevator availability, especially on Friday nights.
But, the problem is compounded by a group of people I like to call "recreational elevator riders". These are people, often groups of teenagers or families with young children, who ride the elevator as if it is an attraction at Disneyland. They go all the way up to the top. Then ride all the way to the bottom. Then all the way to the top again. Cheap thrills for the whole family, especially if it's a glass elevator.
For those of us who actually want to use the elevator, you know, to get some place on a floor not accessible by escalators (people who take the lift one floor when it is next to the escalator... another pet peeve of mine) it is rather irritating.
But maybe that's an untapped market- "LiftLand". The amusement park filled with all sorts of elevators!!!
I only started to notice the phenomenon when I saw that people who were on a full lift going down were still in the same lift going up. Multiple times. I also observed the same phenomenon in other malls. It's rather strange. At first I thought it might have been people who had come to Jakarta from smaller towns where they don't have elevators... but now I'm not so sure....
What an interesting observation! I grew up and lived in Indonesia for 15 years and I still think that Indonesians are not THAT new to 'modern conveniences', but it's really surprising to read your post as I have no idea that there ARE people in Indonesia who ride elevators for recreation! LOL
...reminds me of that one-and-only shopping mall in Phnom Penh, Cambodia - host to the country's very first sets of escalators. In front of each escalator, the mall actually post staff members to instruct the visitors on how to ride the escalators. Most Cambodians apparently have never seen escalators before so a lot of them are apparently scared of those things. No kidding!
...this post also reminds me of my trip to Monas - talk about waiting for an elevator, people have to queue up for hours to get up (and there's only one sad elevator with a bajillion people forming a queue that stretches to as far as 200 metres from the elevator doors!). I'll never visit monas again (my parents warned me that only VERY curious foreign tourists and out-of-towner hicks visit the place). Goodness...
Posted by: Erique | April 23, 2009 at 07:32 AM