Bananas in pyjamas

[venta]

So, people of the internet, tell me your thoughts on climbing stairs.

For our example, we're going to consider my office. I work on the second floor. It's a high-ceilinged building, so more stairs per floor than an average house, but it's still (on average) quicker to climb than it is to wait for the lift. It's actually a rather grand marble staircase that wraps round the lift shaft (three sides of a square, not a spiral) and it has bannisters on one side.

(66 steps - I just counted them)

Now, at one end of the spectrum we have, say, a wheelchair user who will always take the lift. At the other, maybe a fitness enthusiast who will always run up the stairs. In between we have people who do one or the other, or whose behaviour changes from day to day depending on a million factors.

I walk up the stairs every day because I think it's quicker. Because I'm too impatient to wait for the lift. Because I worry that (having a dicey knee) if I don't use the stairs I might one day find I can't any more. But primarily because I assume that stairs is the usual, default choice of someone who feels physically up to climbing them without impacting the rest of their day. For two storeys, you'd only bother with the lift if you couldn't do the stairs.

Empirically, this is not how my colleagues feel: most of them take the lift.

Now, I know my colleagues all consider themselves physically capable of tackling the stairs. I know this because my desk-neighbour recently had to write a hasty addition to our fire safety policy when we had a contractor who couldn't, in emergency, use the stairs.

I understand, though, that there's a big difference between "can in an emergency" and "choose to every day". I have no idea whether people have health issues that mean they prefer the lift, whether they just consider the lift the sensible option, or whether it's simply slightly closer to the entrance. Maybe they just don't want to arrive at the office out of breath.

And so, my representative sample of humanity, I'd like to know your thoughts. If you can use stairs, do you? If not, why not? Do you think the question should be "given that there is a lift, why don't I use it?"

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has a theory that everyone, while a teenager, should have a Sekrit Government Operative break into their house and trash their harddrive. The idea is that direct personal experience is the only way everyone will actually learn about backups. Perhaps our Operative should also break the subject's ankle while there :)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I can see the appeal of that theory. As a teenager, my then-computer-phobic mother taught me that lesson, along with another important one for a coder. I'd spent *all day* on the family ZX Spectrum writing a fruit machine game. I wanted to make it as user-friendly as possible, and persuaded my mother to give it a go, on the grounds that if she could use it, anyone could. She sat down cross-legged, and pulled the computer on to her lap. That, alas, was slightly further than the power cable would reach. Of course, I hadn't saved it to tape. Luckily, the next day, I was able to add the 'rewriting it is way quicker and you end up with something better' lesson to the importance of backups. It didn't immediately help my mother's computer phobia, of course, despite my reassurances.

>Perhaps our Operative should also break the subject's ankle while there :)

I prefer the the plan of making personal connections between people with salutary experiences, rather than inflicting them. Having a friend who is gay is a massive predictor for positive views towards non-heterosexuality. So I reckon we should be able to get further and cause less harm by social engineering of people's friendships. Because nothing can go wrong with that, right?