Lifts and patience

As soon as people get into a lift, one of them becomes lift boy. If he/she gets out at his intended floor, another will replace that person. This lift boy's main job is to keep a finger on the close button. Whenever lift halts at any floor, if nobody is visible in his radar, just press the close button. Usually lifts are designed to close automatically after 15 seconds or so. But 15 seconds are so precious! If there are 6 lifts, a person who had pressed the button before he could realize which one has arrived, the lift would have moved on, courtesy close button!

Once, after my office hours, I came out of office space to catch a lift to reach parking area in basement. There was already a guy and he had pressed the down button. Out of six lifts none turned up. After 6-7 seconds, he lost his patience pressed the up button as well. Okay, now a lift arrives from below floors few guys get out of it and those are the only ones who were there. The indicator for that lift is up, our guy enters into it. I don't enter thinking that it is going up. Now the guy who entered this lift (which became empty just now) presses button 0. Now the lift's indicator changes direction and starts to move down! Unfortunately the door is closed, so I can't make it to that lift. I pressed the down button again and continued my wait. Here, the lifts indicator showed upwards, only because it thought somebody had a plan to go up! There is another architectural flaw in the lift area, with six lifts in place but no staircase!!

In our apartment, we have two lifts for each of the 11 story towers. The two lifts don't talk to each other and hence operate independently. Some people press both the lifts buttons. Plan is to take whichever comes first. At the end, both turn up and only one is used. Waste of energy! Concern here is not about two lifts being independent, but our attitude.