Do “close door” buttons on elevators ever actually work?
Dear Cecil: Please confirm or refute my suspicions. Does the “Close Door” button on an elevator actually do anything, or is it provided merely as a tension-releaser for us harried yuppies? I await an uplifting answer. — Leonard V., Silver Spring, Maryland Cecil replies: Spare me the pathetic puns, Lennie; this is serious business. The grim truth is that a significant percentage of the close-door buttons in this world, for reasons that we will discuss anon, don’t do anything at all. Naturally, this is not something the elevator companies wish to have widely known, lest there be social unrest. When I talked to the folks at the Otis elevator company in Farmington, Connecticut, they were all innocence. Among other things, I was told that the close-door buttons at Otis HQ (which, the views of the cynics notwithstanding, is not located in a one-story building) always work like a charm. This is comforting news, needless to say. I would suggest that any harried city dweller who has never seen
