h a l f b a k e r y"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
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You are packed in the elevator, fortunately right behind someone who smells OK. Packed none the less. You wish you had not watched those zombie movies. This elevator is packed because lots of people want to ride. And on every floor the elevator stops, and other people who want to ride stare at the
people who are already in there, and wait for the doors to close and the next elevator to come. Next floor: repeat.
Elevators must have some sort of weight sensor that will fuss if it is too heavy. I propose that when the elevator is heavy, it conclude that it is full of people. The full elevator should proceed to a destination floor to disgorge a few, and not stop along the way to pick up more.
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There's a Holiday Inn near Boston that has an elevator that
politely tells you when it's full and won't budge until
somebody gets off. This idea is the next logical evolution. |
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It might be a Holiday Inn Express. |
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How about an elevator that measures weight and height upon entrance and says, "take the stairs, fatty" when appropriate? |
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Wow obese people are going to form an advocacy group, if
they're not too fat and lazy. |
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//Does it charge obese folks a surcharge?// |
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<assembles portable soap-box> |
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I'd say, only if it gets to charge a surcharge on every other psychological and physical ailment known to man. Are you sure you'd like to have your own demons weighed against other peoples? |
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<disassembles portable soap-box> |
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I've already seen this. Either the Residence Inn or
the Doubletree in Atlanta GA does this (don't
remember which year it was). |
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To do it right, it needs a better algorithm to
determine which floor to start at, because it's
royally frustrating when the elevator goes all the
way up, makes it about halfway down, and then
shoots the rest of the way to the lobby, and you
can't get an elevator for half an hour or more
(literally once walked down from the seventh
floor, had breakfast, and my return to my room
was the first time the elevator stopped on that
floor since I pressed the button to go down). |
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// once walked down from the seventh floor, had
breakfast, and my return to my room was the first
time the elevator stopped on that floor since I
pressed the button to go down// |
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Because one of the people who showed up while I
was first waiting, and who didn't have the option of
walking down seven flights of stairs, got on when I
got back. |
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Perhaps the doorway to the elevator could be covered by a mechanism akin to that found in a creel or lobsterpot: when the elevator is at the ground floor, and empty, the funnel points into the body of the lift, and passengers can clamber up the narrowing, rising funnel and drop down onto the crash mat on the lift floor; when the elevator is full, the funnel points up and out of the lift, into the hall, allowing you to plop, briefcase n'all, onto the carpet tiles. |
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Yes, that is the solution for which we have been searching
all this time. I cannot envision a safer or more efficient
means of traveling between floors than a non-stop elevator
with a reversible weir gate where passengers go leaping in
and out like business-casual salmon. |
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Calum's improvement on my mundane idea puts me to shame. I wish only that it be posted with liberal and lascivious illustration that I might grant it a bun and also buns from all my shadow accounts. |
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I envision the illustration in the style of Hieronymous Bosch. |
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// "take the stairs, fatty" when appropriate? // |
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That makes about as much sense as having a camera with image recognition software that triggers a recording of "Sorry, no ugly people. Make the world a better place - why don't you climb the stairs to the roof and then throw yourself off ?" |
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You end up with a flat dead ugly person. It does not reduce the ugly meter one bit. |
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Packed elevator with fatties or thinnies still packed.
I prefer the fatties, because one occupies the place
of 3 thinnies but breathes only 1/3 as much sweet
sweet air. Total weight is what I am talking about
here, without any pejorative implications. |
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