High-Rise Protocols

I have always been fascinated by the unspoken rules of behaviour that are agreed on by people in urban environments. I live in a 21-story high-rise building, and certain protocols seem to have evolved among its residents.

Most people who live here enter by the side door, which requires a key to open. A sidewalk extends about a hundred feet from the door, and then bends left towards the street. The accepted rule is that if Person A is opening the door, and Person B has reached the bend in the sidewalk, Person A holds it open and waits for Person B to arrive. If Person B is further away than the bend in the sidewalk, he or she is deemed too far away, and Person A doesn't have to wait.

An unspoken assumption is that everybody who is entering by the side door is a tenant. Visitors wouldn't realize that this is the most commonly used entrance.

For the front door, the rule is slightly different. People waiting for the elevators can see anybody trying to get in by the front door - but, unless the person at the door is obviously elderly or disabled, nobody opens it. After all, the front door is where visitors come in. And nobody wants a visitor to come in unless they've been let in by somebody who lives here. (If I ever plan on starting a burglary ring, I think I'd find a crooked little old lady and cut her in on a share of the profits. Nobody would ever suspect that Granny is here to make off with the silverware.)

Okay, now everybody's inside. Next up is the elevator protocol. Here's a few rules I've figured out:

• If you're on an elevator that's going down, and it reaches the ground floor, old people and women get to get off first.
• After that, people normally leave in reverse order of their arrival.
• If you're on the ground floor, and somebody is getting on who has their hands full, the usual rule is to ask, "What floor?" But it is important to say this in a slightly off-handed way, so as not to imply that the other person is incapable of doing it himself or herself.

I've seen offices where the elevator protocol is more complicated, and sometimes difficult to resolve: Do older people get on first? Senior management? Your boss? At one place I used to work, the elevator would sometimes go up with nobody in it, as the people on the ground floor were too busy working out who should go before whom.

I guess it could be worse: we could live in a country like Japan, where the rules of behaviour and protocol are much more complicated. I did a Google search on "Japan" plus "protocol", and found at least two companies that specialize in training businesspeople how to behave in Japan. (The links are here and here. There's probably a lot more of them.) And I'm also glad that English doesn't have formal and informal second-person pronouns: we don't have to worry whether we know someone well enough to use the informal second-person with them.

By the way, here is a page that claims to say "thank you" in 465 languages.


While I'm here: a friend of mine sent me this link to an album cover wars video. Wow - somebody has a lot of time on their hands.