August 3, 2005
The Great Express Elevator
Okay, now that the link on how to hack an elevator has been on up kottke for a few hours, how many people have tried it? How many floors have you been able to bypass? Or have you noticed many more elevators passing your floor without stopping? Let us know the details and we'll compare notes.
Ask Gothamist on elevator etiquette. A Chinese food deliveryman was trapped in an elevator for three days and some elevator doors open even without a cab. Plus, How Stuff Works on how elevators work.
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Excellent - another way for people to be rude and self-important.
We do this all of the time in my office since we're on the top floor. It's quite awesome...
I usually just skip people on the 2nd floor, though, who are just too lazy to walk down one.
the author means "floor" button as in button for the floor you are travelling to, yes? I have not ever been able to get this to work.
How the hell do you selectively skip people on the 2nd floor, and not the others? you make no sense.
doesn't work, I remember doing it 5 yrs ago when I worked at Met Hosp.
regarding the second fl. did it even occur to you that their access to a stairway is locked? this is so any shlub can't get into a building via unsecured stairways. (or limit access to some floors)
someone used this trick to skip my floor on september 11, 2001. now i'm dead.
When I was in college, the '60s vintage elevators at my dorm had quite a bit of play in the buttons from decades of use and people would use a technique known as "the tap." If you tapped the emergency stop button (very very lightly) as the elevator stopped and just before the doors opened, it would cancel the call and the elevator would proceed on its way. Tap too hard and you'd ring the emergency bell. Tap too early and the elevator would jolt to a momentary stop before skipping the floor. Tap too late and the door opens. Tap at the right instant and the technique was smooth as silk. Obviously, this won't work on the newer elevators.
As for why skip the people on the second floor: It's one friggin' floor down. Not even up. Do you know how easy that is? The lazy bums should take the stairs instead of forcing everybody else to make a stop.
Why deprive 2nd floor dwellers of the elevator? Do you get off the 2nd floor and walk your way down to the first floor? Will you be a lazy bum if you don't?
Tried it last night as I was leaving work. I work on the top floor so I thought it would be a good opportunity for the experiment. Unfortunately it didnt work, a cleaning lady got on at like the 12th floor.
I can't get to the Kottke one, but something like this has been supremely popular on eeggs.com for like 5 years:
http://www.eeggs.com/items/12697.html
Didn't work for me either. And I was so excited...
To answer questions:
There is no locked security door from any floor to the lobby, so I think people who get on to go down or up between the first and second floor are lazy and/or fat, so I don't care if they're irritated. I also skip all other floors, too; I just think the 2nd floor people are the really lazy ones. 3rd floor people are kind of lazy, and the other floors' people aren't lazy, but they're slowing me down, so I skip them too. I'm selfish.
Also, I have goten off on the second floor and walked down to see how it feels; pretty easy. Sometimes I even walk down or up from the 13th floor just to have a break and stretch my legs.
If you ever get skipped on a 2nd or 3rd floor, just run down the stairs and shiv the person if it makes you that angry. Or, wait until the elevator goes down to the ground floor, and then back up to the 2nd floor, and then down again. Obviously, you're too lazy to walk one flight, so you won't mind waiting a little longer.
There are many legitimate reasons why someone on the 2nd floor would take the elevator down to the lobby level.
1. Person has a large package - stairs would be dangerous.
2. Person has a stroller or dolly.
3. Person is handicapped and needs to take the elevator. (WHEELCHAIR)
4. Stairs are locked or inaccessable.
Quit thinking like a prick.
1. Not my problem.
2. See 1.
3. See 2.
4. See 3.
Maybe this, maybe that, maybe the other thing. You can sit around and think up legitimate reasons all night, but nothing beats watching the real world. In the real world, the people getting on the down elevator on the second floor usually aren't carrying anything or have any physical handicaps. I'm not saying it's right to skip the second floor, but these people wouldn't suffer in the least if they had to take the stairs, while the rest of us who got on on the upper floors wouldn't have to squeeze more tightly back to accommodate a few people who could have done without the elevator.
Why bother justifying in the first place if you're such a fatheaded fuck?
BTW, tough guy, you do realize that it would be illegal to lock the lobby door from the stairway? The fire code demands that people be able to exit the stairway at the lobby. Stairway doors to all other floors can be locked, but you're not talking about other floors.
I'd take the stairs if I could, guy and Brightliner. My office occupies the third and fourth floors of a building, and I'd happily take the stairs between those floors (or even from/to the ground floor). Unfortunately, we have to take the elevator because the stairs are locked except in a fire emergency. Brightliner, it's not illegal for the first floor doors to be locked--they only have to open INTO the lobby in the event of a fire, not from the lobby into the stairwell. And they can always be alarmed so you'd set something off if you tried to use it otherwise, making it basically useless most of the time.
As it is, having to take the elevator up or down one stop to get to the microwave is making people in our building hate us pretty quickly.
our building has signs on the stairwells that say they will arrest you for tresspassing if you get caught using them. seriously.
Stairclimber,
We were talking about walking down one floor through the stairs. Obviously, that would entail leaving the stairs to the lobby, not vice versa. I never said the door to stairs had to open from the lobby. But by law, they do have to be openable from the inside because they're fire exits. There was a little something called the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire about 94 years ago that made that law necessary. And yes, some jerkoff building managers will put alarms on the doors. Nothing you can do about that except move to a better building where they treat tenants with respect.
Wow, some people are really passionate about their elevators.
To answer the original question, yes, this seems to work in my building. It's quite a handy thing to know!
i tried this on 3 elevators, bragging to whoever i was with, how i could "hack" an elevator. it didnt work. i pushed both buttons the same time. by the way is this a definition of a hack? a trick? shortcut? its a dumb word. i hacked the door yesterday ( kicked it open) i hacked my car (hotwired) i hacked into the gotham website and wrote this stupid note......