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

[lnr]

My office is on the fourth floor - and most of my immediate colleagues walk up and down the stairs - there are people who do use the lifts who could probably walk but it's a big building and a small lift and quite often you're only going one or two floors to find people. If I were another couple if floors up it might be different.

Admittedly my wing hasn't got a lift to my exact floor anyway, so I'd have to walk one short flight minimum anyway (this was a slight nuisance when I was walking with a stick when recovering from a bad sprain/chipped bone).

I used to have an office on the first floor and actually used a lift more often then as we were right at the end of the corridor which had a lift but no stairs, and it was quicker than going the whole long way round - but it always felt silly.

(Floors given by actual number of flights above ground level, rather than named level - our floor numbering is silly).