Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. And Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. Jerry has a
Speaker 1: personal story in this one that I teased in the
Speaker 1: n s A podcast That's right, which were recorded like
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Jerry has been stuck and rescued from an elevator. Jerry,
Speaker 1: it turns out, was stuck in an elevator, a crowded
Speaker 1: elevator for four hours, crowded with the NASCAR people, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, Yeah, NASCAR fans who were in town
Speaker 1: for a race, I guess right. And she had to
Speaker 1: get rescued through the top through the top. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: we learned from this research. You can't get yourself out
Speaker 1: through that top because it's bolted on the other side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have someone come. It's for them to get
Speaker 1: you out, not for you to get yourself out. Sorry.
Speaker 1: John McClean, Yeah, what you did is impossible. And there
Speaker 1: weren't even bolts on his then he just like kicked
Speaker 1: it up exactly. I think there was like a screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this ended up being way more interesting than I thought. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get to the interesting stuff. Okay, So chuck um,
Speaker 1: we can begin to begin by talking about elevators and
Speaker 1: who invented them. Yes, and it should come as no
Speaker 1: surprise because if I had a dime for every time
Speaker 1: we sat in the studio and said it started in
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, it seems like everything started in ancient Rome
Speaker 1: or China. Um. But in ancient Rome they did use
Speaker 1: um you could call an elevator. It was a lift. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like an enclosed elevator, but it was you know,
Speaker 1: like a platform with pulleys that they would lift things up.
Speaker 1: Especially doing the work of an elevator, they used people
Speaker 1: livestock water screws, which means Archimedes was involved, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know and of a friend in New Jersey, a
Speaker 1: bartender who when you would ask what the score of
Speaker 1: the game was a football game, he would just breathe
Speaker 1: by and go lion stand Christians, nothing, no matter who
Speaker 1: was playing. This one of those bartender jokes. You know.
Speaker 1: He'd imagine he said it a million times and probably
Speaker 1: got it from someone else. Just an aside. Well, but
Speaker 1: we're talking about as far back as UM three six PC.
Speaker 1: Archimedes was in ancient Greek, the Syracusian maybe, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was from Syracuse, Orange Orange, um and uh So, elevators
Speaker 1: and the concept in the functioning elevator has been around
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Um. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, though, that they really started to take shape
Speaker 1: in a way that we see them now. They were
Speaker 1: basically just these platforms that lifted you up and you
Speaker 1: needed an ox. I think we should talk about Louis.
Speaker 1: Um which one is he x V man I always
Speaker 1: get that backwards. He's not a super bowl. Yeah. King
Speaker 1: Louis he had what some people say it was the
Speaker 1: first modern type elevator with his flying chair. It was
Speaker 1: on the outside of her Sailles and his mistress. It
Speaker 1: was built for Madam the Chateau rou Um. This sounds
Speaker 1: like a made up name. No, that was her name,
Speaker 1: and she lived up on the third floor and would
Speaker 1: go sit in her little box and lower herself down
Speaker 1: right to the king's balcony. Um and they would do
Speaker 1: the devil's business and it was very, um, very convenient
Speaker 1: for him. He also had flying tables at dinner that
Speaker 1: would uh lower food right at his chair like a
Speaker 1: dumb waiter. A really dumb waiter, and he would, you know,
Speaker 1: clap his hands, I guess, and call for the flying table,
Speaker 1: which bring bringing bring me another guinea hen yeah, I
Speaker 1: love guinea hens um dumb waiter, by the way, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty insensitive term for that thing. Sure, you know.
Speaker 1: And lazy Susan, what's out all about? That's very derogatory.
Speaker 1: Did you know that lazy Susan was supposedly invented by
Speaker 1: a Chinese American restaurant tour at Chinese restaurants, that's where
Speaker 1: they're invented named Susan. Did you know that that it
Speaker 1: was invented in a restaurant, in a Chinese restaurant, and
Speaker 1: like San Francisco and like the fifties or forties, it
Speaker 1: doesn't but that's what it's used for. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: is that some revelations, Okay, I would have guessed like
Speaker 1: like it was invented around the same time as and
Speaker 1: by the same people as who invented like the butter
Speaker 1: Church time frame, is what you were remarked. I thought
Speaker 1: the Chinese restaurant kind of threw me off to the
Speaker 1: whole thing. So at any rate, elevators have been around
Speaker 1: for a while. What are the fift it's got clever.
Speaker 1: He had one that used the system of ropes and pulleys,
Speaker 1: which conceivably his flying chair was conceivably the first elevator,
Speaker 1: the first modern elevator ever built. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, like I said, that they started to
Speaker 1: really take shape. And they still had like the kind
Speaker 1: that were used for industrial purposes like for mining or
Speaker 1: store houses or things like that. Um, but then passenger
Speaker 1: elevators really started to take shape. The problem was they
Speaker 1: were extraordinarily dangerous. People died. A lot of people died
Speaker 1: if you had a rope system, a rope system, cable system,
Speaker 1: or tension system. Those are three names for the same thing,
Speaker 1: which basically uses a pulley and a rope to lower
Speaker 1: and raise a box that used stand in and your
Speaker 1: human being. That's that kind of elevator, as opposed to
Speaker 1: a hydraulic pistons system, which is what they used pre
Speaker 1: industrial revolutions, which makes a lot of sense. Now I'm
Speaker 1: sorry they used it posted industrial revolution, but pre rope
Speaker 1: and pulley system modern elevator the kind we see now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't have a very tall building because you're
Speaker 1: your piston had to draw down, and if you wanted
Speaker 1: to go up, you had to draw that thing down
Speaker 1: just as far. Yeah, the piston had to be as
Speaker 1: tall as the floor of the tallest floor of the building.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, you had to have that pit that
Speaker 1: was equally deep. Right, that's right, that's a deep pit
Speaker 1: if it's a tall Building's right, it's not so we
Speaker 1: so yes, that is a little segue that humanity took
Speaker 1: with the piston or hydraulic elevator, and apparently they were
Speaker 1: still um popular in mansions. And have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the movie Lady in a Cage. Uh, it's a black
Speaker 1: and white movie with the Jimmy Khan overacting like a
Speaker 1: crazy as a hoodlum in like the fifties. Um, And
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the famous star who's
Speaker 1: the woman in the cage. But the cage is an
Speaker 1: elevator that's trapped between floor in our mansion and things
Speaker 1: go really badly for it's a good movie. Not have
Speaker 1: to check that out. Um. But the rope and pulley system,
Speaker 1: the reason why it didn't become the modern elevator until
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties is because there was no safety mechanism,
Speaker 1: those ropes would break, and like you said, a lot
Speaker 1: of people died because the whole thing we just go
Speaker 1: all the way down to the of the shafts and
Speaker 1: kill everybody on board. There's nothing to stop it, which
Speaker 1: is uh, some people's greatest fear is being on And
Speaker 1: we'll get to that stuff later, like what might happen? Yes,
Speaker 1: we will teaser. But along came a guy named Elijah Otis,
Speaker 1: whose last name you might recognize. Yeah, in eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: he and his sons, uh said, you know what these
Speaker 1: things need, They need a safety device some people don't die,
Speaker 1: and so they created and debuted very famously the safety
Speaker 1: Hoist the fifty four New York World's Fair when he
Speaker 1: dramatically got in and said, cut the rope, and they
Speaker 1: cut the rope and it fell like a foot and
Speaker 1: then the safety device break and everyone went, wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: It worked, that's right, And it's like it was attested
Speaker 1: on a spring and as long as the rope was tense,
Speaker 1: the spring would stay tripped, tripped, no untripped. And then
Speaker 1: when the tension was released, because the rope is no
Speaker 1: longer there, the spring will go and those the breaks
Speaker 1: like you said, would come out, and that's basically still
Speaker 1: in use today. A lot of elevators like this thing
Speaker 1: that he created in eighteen fifty two. It's it's they
Speaker 1: still build it into brand new elevators today. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: of them they'll have uh, you know, it's a notch,
Speaker 1: notches cut into the railing that guides the elevator. So
Speaker 1: when those little things spring out, it just clicks into
Speaker 1: the next notch. Some wedges go into them and they
Speaker 1: can't go any further. And you're like, oh, man, thank
Speaker 1: God for Elijah Otis and his sons. Right. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people say, well, Elijah Otis invented the elevator,
Speaker 1: the modern elevator. He did not. Actually, he invented the
Speaker 1: safety mechanism, invented the non killing elevator that that allowed
Speaker 1: rope and pulley systems to become ubiquitous and used in
Speaker 1: all sorts of buildings for people to trust them. And
Speaker 1: so he probably created the modern elevator industry is a
Speaker 1: better way to put it. Yeah. I mean he formed
Speaker 1: an elevator company and the Otis brothers and did pretty
Speaker 1: well with it. But there was another Yeah, he's dead,
Speaker 1: but his company's doing great. Yeah, I think like eight
Speaker 1: percent of elevators or Otis elevators. But he's dead. He's
Speaker 1: very much dead. He this was well over a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago. There's another Otis who is contemporaneous
Speaker 1: to Elijah Otis, but his first name was Otis Otis Toughs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are the chances? Apparently pretty high? Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: Otis Toughs fella. He actually invented what we would recognize
Speaker 1: as the first modern elevator a couple of years before
Speaker 1: Elijah Otis got his patent on his safety mechanism, and
Speaker 1: it was basically a car, yeah, with automatically opening and
Speaker 1: closing doors. There were benches, which all of the early
Speaker 1: elevators had, which apparently we'll get too later, is why
Speaker 1: we all face forward? Yeah, well sure, that's one reason,
Speaker 1: and just to not be weird it's another one. But
Speaker 1: he had a really good idea that was extraordinarily safe.
Speaker 1: The Otis um tufted. His elevator was basically had a
Speaker 1: hole going through the middle that was threaded, and so
Speaker 1: his elevator acted like a nut that was going around
Speaker 1: a very long screw that went from top to bottom.
Speaker 1: That's what the elevator went up on. So I guess
Speaker 1: you would turn the screw and the thing would probably
Speaker 1: be pulled down or pulled up, and it would it would.
Speaker 1: There's no safety issues whatsoever. But it was very impractical
Speaker 1: because it was very expensive. And again, this screw would
Speaker 1: have to be at least as tall as the building.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a big yeah. So he was not
Speaker 1: able to sell a lot of them. He did, okay,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't widely adopted because it was just impractical.
Speaker 1: Everybody yeah and said, hey, these Otis brothers have really
Speaker 1: got it going on because they're safe, they're efficient, and
Speaker 1: we can scale this out. You know, it's a scalable product. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's the story of how the elevator came to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the end of that one, right, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: right after this break, we are going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about safety mechanisms and why you don't faulter
Speaker 1: your death now. All right, So we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the safety, but let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the how an elevator works. UM. Modern
Speaker 1: elevators use a cable system where the cable is looped
Speaker 1: over a sheave. It's very simple actually, and I say cable,
Speaker 1: but several cables, uh, and it is just has a
Speaker 1: grooved rim surface the sheep does. And it's just basically
Speaker 1: there's a counterweight on the other side. Elevator goes up,
Speaker 1: counterweight goes down. Elevator goes down, counterweight goes up. Each
Speaker 1: of those cables, by law, is required to be able
Speaker 1: to hold the elevator fully loaded plus and by itself.
Speaker 1: But there's still like four to seven eight cables usually
Speaker 1: per elevator car. So you would have to have all
Speaker 1: of those eight snap in order to put yourself even
Speaker 1: in the slightest bit of danger. But that's when other
Speaker 1: fail safes come into play to help you from dying. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're the elevator cables are not going to snap
Speaker 1: pretty much ever, because not only are there um all
Speaker 1: of these extra cables, there elevator inspectors who examine the
Speaker 1: cables to make sure there's nothing wrong with them, and
Speaker 1: he's like, seven of these are shot, but you still
Speaker 1: got the one, so it's fine. Um, So it's the
Speaker 1: cable snapping is not going to be a problem. But
Speaker 1: if if all of the cables did snap, if somebody
Speaker 1: got up there and cut through them within a seedling torch.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that happened you you the car, the
Speaker 1: elevator car would basically fall about two ft because remember
Speaker 1: we talked about that thing that was invented by Elijah
Speaker 1: Otis that's still in use today. Well, there are some
Speaker 1: things that are UM connected to governors. The cables that
Speaker 1: are bolted to the top of the car and run
Speaker 1: through the sheave, which is basically a giant pulley. They
Speaker 1: also go through a governor speed governor, and when that
Speaker 1: governor starts spinning really fast, which tells it that that the
Speaker 1: cables are spinning really fast, it automatically trips those wedges
Speaker 1: which go into the grooves into the rail that the
Speaker 1: elevator car runs on. So it'll fall about two feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's if it has I mean, there are different
Speaker 1: kinds of breaking systems, but that is certainly one. Another
Speaker 1: one is uh this kind of um break shoe basically
Speaker 1: that goes around the rail like a roller coaster, right
Speaker 1: and then um when the governor pulley senses that it's
Speaker 1: spinning too fast, it trips those and they just gripped
Speaker 1: the rail. Either way, you're gonna fall just a feet
Speaker 1: a foot or two. Yeah, And I don't think we
Speaker 1: said that this is it's an electric motor that spins
Speaker 1: the sheath that pulls the cables up and down, right,
Speaker 1: I thought that was obvious, But we should point that out.
Speaker 1: We should. And it's a pretty elegant system actually, because
Speaker 1: the counterweight and the elevator weigh fairly close to the
Speaker 1: same um. So the motor that's running the sheave only
Speaker 1: has to overcome the force of friction to basically tip
Speaker 1: the balance between the two so that whichever one is
Speaker 1: lower will pull the other one down. So that's how
Speaker 1: an elevator goes up and down. So let's say the
Speaker 1: cables have been cut, and this diabolical villain that once
Speaker 1: you dead in a very expensive and time consuming there's
Speaker 1: a lot easier ways to kill somebody um has also
Speaker 1: somehow removed all of the safeties. That's what in elevator jargon,
Speaker 1: the safety mechanism are called safeties. That's the fact of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Uh what happens then? So you're saying, let's
Speaker 1: you are just plummeting, you're free say free fall, But
Speaker 1: as this article points out, it's not quite freefall. Because
Speaker 1: there's gonna be friction because it is on on rails
Speaker 1: and you can't be and you're not in a vacuum. No,
Speaker 1: you're And what's more, because you're not in a vacuum,
Speaker 1: there's air beneath you, and this elevator car that is
Speaker 1: takes up most of the space and the shaft um
Speaker 1: is compressing the air beneath it, so it's creating a
Speaker 1: cushion of air. And like you said, the friction from
Speaker 1: the rails is slowing the whole thing down. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna enter free fall, which is where there's
Speaker 1: no force of gravity exerted on you at all. No,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be slowed down, but you're definitely gonna feel
Speaker 1: like you're falling. You know, you're gonna be moving at
Speaker 1: a of speed, a dangerous rate of speed. But at
Speaker 1: the very bottom there are shock absorbers built in. And
Speaker 1: it looks like, I mean, a big springy, spongy thing,
Speaker 1: and that's basically what it is. It's a cylinder, uh
Speaker 1: piston filled with oil usually and so that'll help you
Speaker 1: out a little bit too, probably keep you from getting killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: depending on where you fall from. And there's apparently one
Speaker 1: instance in the history of elevators, at least in America,
Speaker 1: that um where actually happened. Yeah, where these cars have
Speaker 1: fallen modern elevator cars have fallen from a significant height. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was in when a Bift two bomber accidentally
Speaker 1: ran into the another World Trade Center, the Empire State
Speaker 1: Building and basically cut the cables, the safety breaks, everything
Speaker 1: on two elevator cars that dropped from the seventy ninth floor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's happened once, all the way down and the one
Speaker 1: woman who was a board survived. That's seventy nine floors,
Speaker 1: that's eight h ft. It's a long way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was in that was cushioning, right, you know, imagine
Speaker 1: it's a little better now. Well. One of the things
Speaker 1: that saved her though, is that she was in the
Speaker 1: corner of the car m because the cable, the elevator
Speaker 1: cable started to coil up beneath it as it fell
Speaker 1: down through the through the bottom of the car, and
Speaker 1: it was you know, she was drunk, and you know
Speaker 1: what they say, it's a cigarette the whole drunk. Then
Speaker 1: I think your body is that a is that a
Speaker 1: misnomer that your body like can accept, Like an accident
Speaker 1: more readily if you're drunk, because it doesn't stiffen up.
Speaker 1: I've always heard that might be a wives tale. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about if you are
Speaker 1: going to die or suffer a devastating injury on an elevator,
Speaker 1: chances are no, Um, you have a point zero zero
Speaker 1: ro zero zero zero zero one five percent chance of
Speaker 1: dying on your average elevator ride. How did you come
Speaker 1: up with that number? Well, how you do any average?
Speaker 1: You multiply? Well, we don't get into the math of it.
Speaker 1: Eight billion passenger trips on elevator per year. Seven people
Speaker 1: die on average per year UM. And most of those
Speaker 1: are people that work on elevators UM repairing them. So
Speaker 1: your chances are they say, greater of getting struck and
Speaker 1: killed by lightning, and everyone knows that's not you know,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't worry about dying in an elevator. And it
Speaker 1: says that escalators are ten times safer. That's not necessarily true.
Speaker 1: That's what the elevator people say. It depends. They did
Speaker 1: a study of senior citizens with like a median age
Speaker 1: and I think eighty years UM, and found that there
Speaker 1: were higher um, there were a higher number of um
Speaker 1: accidents on escalators, but zero fatality. He's over this fourteen
Speaker 1: year period, there's fatalities and elevator accidents. And we should say,
Speaker 1: like there's a very very slow or slim chance of
Speaker 1: being injured in an elevator. What did you say? Point
Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero zero zero one five. That's a
Speaker 1: small chance, but it does happen. Yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: and if you do die in an elevator accident, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be pretty gnarly. Have you did you see the
Speaker 1: lady in China? Yeah? I mean, well, there's there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of stories that will put the fear of God
Speaker 1: into you. Um. This this one lady Suzanne Heart in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven and at Exaci, New York, stepped onto
Speaker 1: her elevator, the door closed on her, grabbed her and
Speaker 1: took off up the shaft and killed her, and not
Speaker 1: in a pleasant way. Now, that same week, a woman
Speaker 1: at cal State Long Beach had the exact same thing
Speaker 1: happened to her as she was stepping on the elevator.
Speaker 1: The car just suddenly went up and took her with it.
Speaker 1: They cut her in a half. Yeah. Wow. Um. A
Speaker 1: nurse in China, same thing happened to her, apparently. Statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: if you're going to be injured by a malfunctioning or
Speaker 1: killed by a malfunctioning elevator, it's going to be while
Speaker 1: you're getting on or off and the thing starts moving
Speaker 1: up without you realizing that it's about to happen. Because
Speaker 1: if it does happen, it happens pretty quick. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: started since reading this, I started getting on and off
Speaker 1: of elevators for very fast. Well, that's one thing that
Speaker 1: you should do. You should also pay attention to to
Speaker 1: your surroundings, what's going on. That's that's the problem, because
Speaker 1: getting on and off of an elevator is a pretty
Speaker 1: mindless thing to do. And as um Nick PLOWM. Gartner
Speaker 1: points out, who wrote probably the greatest article anyone's ever
Speaker 1: written on elevators in the history of humanity. It's in
Speaker 1: the New Yorker. It's called up and then Down? And
Speaker 1: how many articles did you read to compare it to
Speaker 1: just this one? Dude? I would put it up against
Speaker 1: any other article you can come up with. There's someone
Speaker 1: out there that wrote one. This like Josh didn't even
Speaker 1: look at mine. I would read it. If they thought
Speaker 1: it compared anyway. He points out that not only is
Speaker 1: it like a mindless thing getting on and off of
Speaker 1: an elevator, we don't even think about what's going on
Speaker 1: during the elevator ride, like we our brains are basically
Speaker 1: like I'm on a leven, I get in, go through
Speaker 1: these doors, and now I get out of the doors
Speaker 1: and I'm on. Well. Yeah, and people they've done studies
Speaker 1: like it that way. Um. Other they've thought about, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should um make the elevator clear so people
Speaker 1: can see what's going on, and that people round me said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want a clear elevator. I don't want to
Speaker 1: see those cables. I want to get in my little
Speaker 1: box and get spit out on whatever floor I pushed
Speaker 1: the button for and the whole um you know, music, Yeah,
Speaker 1: music came about to um to calm people down on elevators,
Speaker 1: to drown out the noise of the elevator mechanism working,
Speaker 1: and just to to calm people down. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you're elevator phobic, it means almost that you are claustrophobic
Speaker 1: and you don't like being in that small space with
Speaker 1: those people. And experts say that if you have a
Speaker 1: big elevator fear. You just got basically your fight or
Speaker 1: flight responses being hijacked in the situation that's truly not
Speaker 1: dangerous because when that's when it's supposed to kick in.
Speaker 1: But the idea of being trapped in Jerry's case with
Speaker 1: NASCAR fans is enough to make her possibly hyperventilate and
Speaker 1: have a panic attack. Uh if she is also claustrophobic,
Speaker 1: which about five percent of people are, well, I think
Speaker 1: elevator phobia and claustrophobia overlap kinda, but they're not one
Speaker 1: and the same right now. Okay, that's what you're saying. Yeah, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: how do you get over that? Well? I mean it
Speaker 1: could be genetic. Some people think that phobias like that
Speaker 1: our genetic. Others think that it comes from being trapped
Speaker 1: in something when you were a kid and comes out
Speaker 1: later when you could always go to the CBT route
Speaker 1: and have a doctor lock you in a small box
Speaker 1: over and over until you get used to it. I
Speaker 1: think that's basically what they do. I think also though, um,
Speaker 1: probably the more common therapy would be exposure therapy, where
Speaker 1: you and your doctor go to the elevator down the
Speaker 1: hall in the doctor's office building, and um go up
Speaker 1: and down a couple of times. I read an l
Speaker 1: A Times article about this um, this psychologist who treated
Speaker 1: people with a fear of elevators, and she said that,
Speaker 1: you know, you start out by just looking at the
Speaker 1: elevator and then maybe getting on for a second, then
Speaker 1: getting right back off, you know. And she said, over
Speaker 1: the course of probably about ten rides, by the tenth one,
Speaker 1: it's gone. Yeah. So it's it's true. Table it's very treatable,
Speaker 1: but it's it's I read another article in the New
Speaker 1: York Times about this woman who said, I have a
Speaker 1: phobia of elevators. That's so bad, I don't even want
Speaker 1: to confront it, Like I don't want to get over it.
Speaker 1: That's too much of a hill to climb to get
Speaker 1: to the other side, even if it just took ten
Speaker 1: elevator rides, Like that's just too much. And people who
Speaker 1: have elevator phobia's lives are altered because of their fear
Speaker 1: of elevators, Like there's lots of places they can't work. Um,
Speaker 1: even if you work on the second floor of the building,
Speaker 1: if the buildings lock and the doors and to the
Speaker 1: stairs locked behind you, like us Yeah, then it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you work on the second floor. You could
Speaker 1: only conceivably work on the first floor. Yeah. We don't
Speaker 1: have the option of taking the stairs here because I've
Speaker 1: made that mistake taking a private call on the stairwell
Speaker 1: and you get locked out, you gotta walk all the
Speaker 1: way down. Yeah. And some people, I imagine too, have
Speaker 1: fear of heights. Um. And one of my friends moms
Speaker 1: couldn't stay above like the third floor of a hotel
Speaker 1: even really yeah, I mean even when the blinds closed
Speaker 1: and everything. She just she knew she was high up
Speaker 1: and that freaked her out. For that reason, I can't
Speaker 1: stand glass outdoor elevators. Yeah, we forgot we shot a scene.
Speaker 1: Oh that was not fun. Was that the peach tree
Speaker 1: or the inside the Marriott here? But the Marriott here
Speaker 1: is a very cool interior glass elevator that goes up
Speaker 1: really high. And um, yeah, I remember. You did a
Speaker 1: good job though. Well, yeah, it was fine on that.
Speaker 1: It was that sky car at Stone Mountain that got me.
Speaker 1: Oh did the sky bucket thing? Yeah, it just takes
Speaker 1: you from one side of the park to the other. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing that you split off of No, it's enclosed oh,
Speaker 1: the one I rode was just like a ski lift. Basically,
Speaker 1: didn't we shoot it stone one? Oh no, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. I thought you're talking
Speaker 1: about six flags the sky bucket. I probably wouldn't like
Speaker 1: that either. Yeah, you're talking about the the tram that
Speaker 1: takes you to the top of some mountain. It is
Speaker 1: fully enclosed. Yes, and remember there's like a poll going
Speaker 1: through the middle that I was holding onto and just
Speaker 1: staring at the floor. Well, that's one of those things
Speaker 1: where if they have to stop it, it like swings
Speaker 1: back and forth and you're reminded, I'm hanging from a
Speaker 1: cable on a big, heavy car. Okay, So we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some elevator etiquette tips. We're gonna help you be
Speaker 1: a better human being. Apparently all right after these messages.
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Speaker 1: There's a couple of people that I think are awesome.
Speaker 1: Uh one. His name was Edward Hall, and he's a
Speaker 1: scientist in the nineteen sixties that invented proximics, which is
Speaker 1: basically studies how much personal space people like. And what
Speaker 1: he found out is Americans have four different categories of
Speaker 1: personal space. Public space, which he found that people like
Speaker 1: to be twelve ft apart from one another, social space
Speaker 1: four ft, personal space a foot and a half, and
Speaker 1: then what he calls intimate space, which is um right
Speaker 1: up on somebody. Yeah. The other guy is a dude
Speaker 1: named John J. Frewan, and he wrote something in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one called the Pedestrian Planning and Design, uh just
Speaker 1: called Pedestrian Planning and Design. It is the go to
Speaker 1: handbook for if you want to build a subway or
Speaker 1: if you want to build an elevator car or anything
Speaker 1: where you're squashing people together. That is still the go
Speaker 1: to for how many how many jerks can we fit
Speaker 1: in this box? Right? So that was comfortably and safely right,
Speaker 1: That was all taking in consideration and all of those things,
Speaker 1: what those are not taking the consideration on our elevator
Speaker 1: cars like they they basically go way beyond that foot
Speaker 1: and a half of personal space. Well, yeah, it goes
Speaker 1: by weight only, right, Yeah, and if if it's a
Speaker 1: busy time, all of a sudden, you can find yourself
Speaker 1: with like an intimate space with all these other people
Speaker 1: around you in a tiny little box. So let's talk
Speaker 1: etiquette when you do find yourself in a situation like that.
Speaker 1: One really good way to prevent being in a crowded
Speaker 1: elevator car and from stopping people in an elevator car
Speaker 1: unnecessarily is following what's called the two flight rule, which
Speaker 1: we can't do here at our office. No, we're an exception.
Speaker 1: And the reason why we're in exceptions because if we
Speaker 1: tried to take the stairs, the doors locked behind you
Speaker 1: and you're trapped in the stairwell and you have to
Speaker 1: go back down to the ground floor, which is the
Speaker 1: one door that's unlocked. Right, that's right. Why do I
Speaker 1: feel like we're helping a stalker? Like the schematics of
Speaker 1: the building, They're like, oh, that's an interesting in detail.
Speaker 1: You will regret sharing that. Do we have stockers, No,
Speaker 1: they're all trapped in the stairwell. That's who those people are.
Speaker 1: The two flight rule is basically says that if you
Speaker 1: are going one to two flights up. Take the stairs
Speaker 1: instead of the elevator keeps people from having to wait. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you get off a distance that you could have
Speaker 1: conceivably walked, and should for your own health walk. Another rule, Uh,
Speaker 1: they always touchy. Do you hold the door for someone
Speaker 1: or not? Um? I always think of curb your enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see that one when Larry uh feigned
Speaker 1: as if he was going to hold the door open
Speaker 1: and wouldn't do it. I didn't see that one. I
Speaker 1: would have assumed that that topic would have covered like
Speaker 1: six consecutive episodes. Now he very obviously was like, oh,
Speaker 1: let me reach for this when and then of course
Speaker 1: he ends up on the same floor in the same
Speaker 1: waiting room as the girl who didn't hold the door
Speaker 1: for and I think she does it to him later,
Speaker 1: of course, in true TV fashion. But um, the author
Speaker 1: of the thing that we read said, if if you're
Speaker 1: on the elevator by yourself, you should always hold the
Speaker 1: door open for someone. But if there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of people on there, you might want to just not
Speaker 1: do it and say, hey, get the next one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't have time to take a straw pole
Speaker 1: to see what everybody on the elevator, thinks, And you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily in charge of everybody, so you don't get
Speaker 1: to decide if the door stays open. So the decision
Speaker 1: is you can't decide doors are closing on their own exactly.
Speaker 1: If it's a full elevator, then yeah, t s yeah.
Speaker 1: And it depends on the amount of elevators. Like we
Speaker 1: have four elevator banks in our office, and I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, there's gonna be another one
Speaker 1: coming very soon. Yeah, So it's not a big deal,
Speaker 1: And I don't expect anyone to hold the elevator for me.
Speaker 1: In fact, I will say, go, don't like, reach your
Speaker 1: hand out and stop the elevators for me, which apparently
Speaker 1: is very dangerous. Um, not necessarily reaching your hand out,
Speaker 1: but jumping on an elevator with the doors closing. That's
Speaker 1: when it's that's you don't want to do that. I
Speaker 1: do that all the time. You're not. You do it,
Speaker 1: but do it at your own peril at my point
Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero zero zero one five risk. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: here's something I didn't know, chuck. Um. There's you're supposed
Speaker 1: to stand in a single file line, no matter how
Speaker 1: many elevators there are that that I think that's true. Like,
Speaker 1: if you work in the Empire State building, you're going
Speaker 1: to get huge lines. But my most office buildings I
Speaker 1: don't think have lines. Depending on the size of the
Speaker 1: office building, they might have. Uh this type of elevator
Speaker 1: call system where you go up to a little keypad
Speaker 1: or something, the dispatch system. Yeah, you type in what
Speaker 1: floor you're going to, and the computer tells you what
Speaker 1: elevator to wait for. You can only take one elevator,
Speaker 1: but the elevator is going straight to your floor and
Speaker 1: it just waits until enough people to fill it up
Speaker 1: come along, and then that sends you on your merry way.
Speaker 1: If you don't have that and you do find a line,
Speaker 1: supposedly you're supposed to stand in single line. Did not
Speaker 1: know that, Well, it may not be true. Again, I
Speaker 1: think if you have that many people in your building
Speaker 1: to warrant a line, then yeah. But our I mean
Speaker 1: ours is pretty big and there's never like a big
Speaker 1: crowd of people. Um, but you bring up an important
Speaker 1: point here as far as the stops go, and um,
Speaker 1: there is a term called elevator ing, which I've never heard,
Speaker 1: and that is the discipline of designing an elevator to
Speaker 1: work efficiently basically, and one of the things that they
Speaker 1: have to look for is uh probable stops and they
Speaker 1: have actually calculated this. Um. A guy his last name
Speaker 1: is Fortune, has a probable stop table and says that
Speaker 1: if there are ten people in an elevator that serves
Speaker 1: ten floors, uh, it is going to you're gonna make
Speaker 1: six and a half stops on average. That half stuff
Speaker 1: is tricky. Ye, ten people on thirty floors nine and
Speaker 1: a half stops. Um, So it's just interesting to think about,
Speaker 1: Like you can avoid all of that with either the
Speaker 1: the dispatch system or uh, like the World Trade Center
Speaker 1: had the sky lobby where you could take an express
Speaker 1: up to like the thirty floor, get off there and
Speaker 1: then get on the local and just go to whatever
Speaker 1: before you want to. And then that same guy, um
Speaker 1: Mr Fortune, who's an elevator consultant, one of the foremost
Speaker 1: ones I gather from that Nick plown Garden article. He
Speaker 1: also told plown Garden that there's um you have to
Speaker 1: factor in what's called weight time, which basically in an
Speaker 1: American office building, supposedly the interval, which is the total
Speaker 1: length of time it takes for a single car to
Speaker 1: go all the way up and all the way down,
Speaker 1: divided by the number of cars. Then you have your
Speaker 1: way time that should be no more than thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: with the actual weight time being about si that are
Speaker 1: eighteen seconds. So in an American office building, you should
Speaker 1: not have to wait for longer than eighteen seconds for
Speaker 1: an elevator. Yeah, and he's carried it one step further,
Speaker 1: which is um you want your handling capacity of the building.
Speaker 1: That is the amount of passengers the percentage of passengers
Speaker 1: of the building's population that you carry in five minutes,
Speaker 1: and he's just thirteen percent is a pretty good target. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to hit that thirteen percent range. And in general,
Speaker 1: in England people are over elevateord and in places like
Speaker 1: India and China they are under elevator. Not enough elevators, yep.
Speaker 1: But in England they're allows you with them and they're
Speaker 1: just carrying one person at a time. Apparently people have
Speaker 1: like two three elevators in their house. Uh, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: have one for you. Regarding etiquette, Okay, if you are
Speaker 1: in an elevator and a man and a woman are
Speaker 1: are exiting the elevator at the same time. Uh, should
Speaker 1: the man let the woman go first? And where are we?
Speaker 1: You are at a guar concert um and it's just
Speaker 1: the two of us. I am always one to say
Speaker 1: ladies first, But I have seen Miss Manners says in
Speaker 1: a corporate environment, you're you should treat everyone equal and
Speaker 1: not do things like ladies first and hold the door
Speaker 1: open for a lady. And I think the Manners mentor,
Speaker 1: Merrily McKee, would like us to correct. She's not Miss
Speaker 1: Manners know, is that someone else? Yeah, she's the Manner's mentor,
Speaker 1: But she says, if you're in an office environment, people
Speaker 1: are supposed to be equal, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: let ladies go first. I say, I'm a Southern gentleman,
Speaker 1: so I do that kind of thing. If it's a
Speaker 1: crowded elevator, it's every person for themselves, like you should
Speaker 1: just get off. If you're at the front, you know,
Speaker 1: standing in front of the door, it just makes more sense.
Speaker 1: It can easily get very clumsy and confusing and just
Speaker 1: awkward if you're like, oh well, make it out of
Speaker 1: the way, you go first. You know, that's not in
Speaker 1: the lady who probably like, who's this create that wants
Speaker 1: to get behind me exactly. Uh. And also, if you're
Speaker 1: on a crowded elevator and you are in front of
Speaker 1: the doors, the proper procedure is to step off and
Speaker 1: let people out, um, instead of just trying to wedge
Speaker 1: yourself into somebody's groin. You know, just like step off,
Speaker 1: the same as if you're on a subway. You can
Speaker 1: get right back on. Don't worry. But I see a
Speaker 1: lot of people not doing that. I wonder why I don't.
Speaker 1: I guess they're lazy jerks. You like, Yeah, you you
Speaker 1: step off. If you're the closest of the door, you
Speaker 1: step off and you leave your hand there, your arm
Speaker 1: then get chopped off. Yeah basically yeah, I mean you're
Speaker 1: but you're leaving it. You're keeping it from closing on
Speaker 1: the people exiting, but you're also keeping closing from closing
Speaker 1: on you. So you can get back on if you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose your place, you know, you're a martyr. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then when you step back on, as per the
Speaker 1: rules of social norms, according to these people who study it,
Speaker 1: everyone just sort of files into the proper place. If
Speaker 1: it's just two of you, you're probably should stand you know, well,
Speaker 1: apart from each other. There's four of you, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna migrate to the corners, and then if it gets
Speaker 1: super full, you're gonna be touching some folks. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: normally up till five it follows the face of a die. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, and you face forward and again
Speaker 1: that's supposedly because there used to be benches in the
Speaker 1: backs of elevators. It would be so weird if someone
Speaker 1: just got on and just walk straight to the back
Speaker 1: of the elevator and stood there. Yeah, like that would
Speaker 1: freak me out. I would get off that elevator. What
Speaker 1: if they just turned around or facing you? No, no, no no,
Speaker 1: if they just got on and just walk straight and
Speaker 1: just face the back wall, I'd be off of that
Speaker 1: thing so fast because they got something up their sleeve
Speaker 1: that I don't want to be a part of. But
Speaker 1: what if they what if you were towards the back
Speaker 1: of the elevator facing front, somebody got on and stayed
Speaker 1: by the doors but just turned around it's facing you.
Speaker 1: That's equally is creepy. And then there between you and
Speaker 1: the door, because I wouldn't even know how to get
Speaker 1: out of there safely, I'd probably bowl the dude over
Speaker 1: and then he'd be like, what's your problem? You just
Speaker 1: start crying? What about your phone? Oh? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: this is a personal thing, I guess, but I think
Speaker 1: you should never talk on the phone when you're several
Speaker 1: feet from a stranger. Barely anybody gets coverage on an
Speaker 1: elevator anyway. They just stand there on the phone the
Speaker 1: whole time. They did we get cut off. Hello, hold on,
Speaker 1: I'm on an elevator. You say, I'll call you back.
Speaker 1: I'm on an elevator. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have
Speaker 1: my conversations in front of people either. Sure, not that
Speaker 1: they're super private, but that's just that's my biz. Sure,
Speaker 1: do you got anything else? Uh? No, I do. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've seen internet videos about did you see the
Speaker 1: one on the the train in Asia where people were
Speaker 1: just packing themselves on and like pushing people on like sardines.
Speaker 1: Apparently in Asia there is a much much higher tolerance
Speaker 1: for personal space when it comes to subways, elevators, and
Speaker 1: getting around. Americans have many more hang ups. Well, we
Speaker 1: have a huge nation that we've spread out through and
Speaker 1: have enormous pockets of unpopulated areas. We like our land
Speaker 1: and our fences, good fences make good neighbors. That's it.
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. It's elevators pretty much. Seriously, go
Speaker 1: read up and then down by Nick plown Gartner in
Speaker 1: the New Yorker. It's awesome. Um, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: I did have one more thing. Actually, what he makes
Speaker 1: an awesome point in there that if it wasn't for elevators,
Speaker 1: the world as we know it would not even be
Speaker 1: the same because verticality is what has allowed us to
Speaker 1: uh grow as people. Um, because if it wasn't for verticality,
Speaker 1: we could only expand outward, and there's only so much
Speaker 1: outward expansion you can do. So elevators themselves have shaped
Speaker 1: the way mankind has has populated this world. Pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It is interesting. Never thought about it before that way.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting article through and through, best by far
Speaker 1: article ever written on elevators. But we have plenty of
Speaker 1: articles on elevators on the site how Stuff Works. You
Speaker 1: can type elevators into the search bar there and they'll
Speaker 1: bring up a bunch of different articles. You can read those.
Speaker 1: And uh, since I said search bar, it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail. I'm gonna call this you guys may
Speaker 1: have legitimately saved our son's life. Wow, right, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: want to say thank you and tell you that it's
Speaker 1: quite possible that your show on allergies saved our son's life.
Speaker 1: Yesterday and this just came in, so this was very recent. Henry,
Speaker 1: our three year old, was playing outside and was stung
Speaker 1: by b you near the wrist on his left arm.
Speaker 1: I didn't think anything of it because he's been stung
Speaker 1: before and not appeared to be allergic with no reaction.
Speaker 1: So I made sure the stinger was out and handed
Speaker 1: him over to my husband Uh to calm him down. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: my husband, Dustin, remember the allergy podcast you did and
Speaker 1: how you said sometimes it takes the first exposure for
Speaker 1: the body to decide if it's response to a specific allergen.
Speaker 1: So Dustin kept a close eye on Henry and noticed
Speaker 1: that the left side of his face started to swell
Speaker 1: within minutes I know. We rushed into the emergency clinic,
Speaker 1: where he received a shot of epinephrin, the dose of anahistamine,
Speaker 1: and prescriptions for both immunosuppressants and an EpiPen. He is
Speaker 1: doing fine, back to his normal wild self, thanks to
Speaker 1: the information, your podcast and Dustin's quick thinking. The first
Speaker 1: thing Dustin said to me after leaving the clinic was
Speaker 1: you realized stuff you should know saved his life. Right,
Speaker 1: that's so cool. I know, thank you for everything you do. Guys.
Speaker 1: We always love the podcast, and now I have even
Speaker 1: more reason to appreciate it. That is from the Becks, Dustin,
Speaker 1: Lindsay Silas, and Henry thanks Beck's permission to read it.
Speaker 1: And she asked the husband and he was like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: people need to get the word out on this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's your kid after they get stung by beats? Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't just laugh at them. Yeah, I would say we
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily save anyone's life. That would be more of
Speaker 1: the parents, Oh of course, and the medical um emergency people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we're glad that knowledge could kind of ease that
Speaker 1: inch it along. Yeah. So, if we've done anything that
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