At four-way stops here in Lake Wobegon drivers do that. It's practically passive aggressive. I have no idea what would happen if four cars drove up at exactly the same time. They might have to bring in the Jaws of Life to get someone to go first.
Let me guess: you just wanted to see how his body looked in clothes?
For some guys it's a power trip to wave you through the intersection. For those Minnesotan women, going first is a test of their cherished capacity for self-abnegation.
The last several weeks of my just-ended contract I was at the corporate headquarters, and I kept a keen eye out for signs of this elevator etiquette. I have to report I didn't see any, but perhaps an anthropologist could have actors set up conditions that would bring them out.
Then I started taking the stairs.
Then I started taking the stairs.
This approach has problems. If you take the stairs, and you let a woman go in front of you, do you avert her eyes from your butt?
do you avert her eyes from your butt?
Nope.
Portlanders do that at 4-way stops too, through a combination of passive aggression and complete cluelessness when they're behind the wheel.
Ogged has two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. I have never seen anything like it.
In fire drills in school boys were required to go first up the fire escape back to the classroom.
I met one woman in the stairwell in three weeks. She was welcome to look at whatever I was showing. Most women don't work in the shoes for stair climbing, for one thing.
Didn't Alameida have a stair climbing routine in the Narnia Towers a few years ago?
Sort of on topic, that conversation a few weeks back where it was stated that it was chivalrous for men to let women exit elevators first has really messed with my previously perfectly content elevator riding. I now can't decide what to do: Do I wait or go first?
This indecision has left me standing in the way when I should have just gone, rushing out and feeling bad, and worst of all, weirdly starting out the door and then stopping when some part of my mind says I'm being a boor. (After I did this, the woman in the elevator said, "Oh, that's O.K.")
So thanks, Unfogged. I now act weird in elevators.
I think that I poo-poohed the elevator etiquette in that thread, but I conferred with my wife - who has worked in elevatored buildings her entire 9 years in Pittsburgh - and she told me that it is, indeed, ubiquitous here.
Glad I just take the steps when I have to.
11: There's a simple solution to this -- just bring a book whenever you take the elevator. Then, stand in the back, and pretend to read. And then you can always exit last without confusion, because everyone will assume you haven't noticed that the doors have opened.
Problem solved.
Where I work, we have the opposite problem. There is a non-trivially-sized minority of people who work in my building who refuse to let anyone off the elevator before they get on. They'll stand outside the doors, nose-to-the-metal, and walk in as soon as they open. Even the possibility of physical contact doesn't deter them.
The group of people who do this is evenly split, 50/50, men and women.
If you take the stairs, and you let a woman go in front of you, do you avert her eyes from your butt?
If you let her go in front of you, there's no way her eyes can be looking at your but. Unless her eyes extend from her head on long eyestalks, snail-fashion, and wrap around and look at you from behind. And in that case, I would let her look at my butt.
The moment someone offers me right of way, I immediately take it, and wave appreciatively. This applies to driving, walking, elevators, bikes, anything. Everyone else should be like me.
14: No wonder you're still unlaid.
If you let her go in front of you, there's no way her eyes can be looking at your but.
You are correct. Thank you for pointing out my mistake.
I sometimes go first at four-way stops, even when I am last to arrive. Somebody has to break the logjam.
On the other hand, I would never precede a woman out of an elevator.
There is a non-trivially-sized minority of people who work in my building who refuse to let anyone off the elevator before they get on.
See, I'm willing to subject my prejudices to scrutiny. These people are from the Indian subcontinent, yes?
(They might also be Israeli, but there are just fewer of them around.)
If it's just me and one other person in an elevator (where I work now has no elevators) I gesture to indicate that they should go first, regardless of gender. It's a polite little way of letting them dash off wherever they need to go and at the same time assert some control over the situation so that we both just get the fuck off the elevator.
If there are multiple people on the elevator, everyone should exit in order of who is nearest the door. That's the most polite way to let everyone just get the fuck off the elevator.
People who stand nose-to-the-door deserve to be run down like jackals. I also tend to kind of glare at them in what I'm sure is a particularly cutting way.
The moment someone offers me right of way, I immediately take it, and wave appreciatively. This applies to driving, walking, elevators, bikes, anything. Everyone else should be like me.
Same here.
Exception: When someone driving a car waves to indicate that I can go, but he keeps driving at like 5 miles an hour instead of stopping, indicating that yes, I can go, but I have a finite and unknown amount of time before he will crash into me anyway. I have no idea what these people are thinking.
Yeah, with that sort of people, you've got to get in touch with your Inner New Yorker, bellow "Excuse me!!" and barrel out of the elevator as is your due.
I confess to, in the morning, sometimes being the nose-to-the-elevator person. I'm just not expecting anyone to get off the elevator coming down first thing in the morning. But I do shamefacedly dodge back out of the way.
And I'm not Indian.
I only have two elevator pet peeves. First, I hate it when people on the second floor use the elevator. Walk the stairs lazybones.
Second, I hate it when people hold the elevator open and chat. Someone on a different floor is waiting for the elevator!!!
And I'm not Indian.
Or so the mullahs would have you believe.
No wonder you're still unlaid.
The elevators are always empty anyway.
Now see, I was totally raised to open doors (car, building, etc.) for women, and I've never heard of an elevator gender etiquette thing. The only rules that make any sense to me are: let people off before you get on, and whoever's closest to the door gets off first. I find it annoying when somebody bursts out from the back of the elevator ahead of a slightly-slower somebody at the front. Same thing with subways, actually.
Also annoying: people who call one of our maddeningly slow elevators to the first floor so they can take it *down* one flight of stairs to the basement.
Then we made sweet love on the way up.
Speaking of, uh, sweet love, has this been linked to yet?
A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her.
They'll stand outside the doors, nose-to-the-metal, and walk in as soon as they open. Even the possibility of physical contact doesn't deter them.
I'm not even sure how this would work. Isn't it faster for everyone involved to let the passengers be disgorged first? I could see myself doing it if I were in a fury about something or other. But I'd be doing it to irritate random people. Not so much otherwise.
Maybe the Israelis and Indians are angry about something. Both nuclear powers. This bodes not well. Ogged should infiltrate, for the good of the country.
I don't know about Indians, but I can totally see Israelis doing this. Not a culture that believes in things such as "personal space," that one.
34: But with Indians you can kind of say, "Oh, so many people. Of course not." Is that true of Israel? I tend to think of it, for some reason, as endless suburbs, with suicide bombers. So basically Idaho.
Not a lot of people, but very little space either. Also, they're all, y'know, pushy.
So basically nothing like Idaho. (He says, having been to neither.)
Israelis I have known have proudly described their national character as "blunt".
The etiquette thing is not that fucking complicated, folks: women and children first; hold the door for them. Jesus.
39 gets it exactly right.
Not a culture that believes in things such as "personal space," that one.
And then there's the Japanese.
Unless it's a revolving door, in which case men first. (I'm not kidding -- genuine rule of etiquette here, premised on the idea that the strong man pushes the heavy door around first.) So, complicated.
What's wrong with 'whoever gets there first'?
What I don't understand is how those nose-to-the-door-like-jackals types can figure out which of a large bank of elevators is going to open first. But they are always at the right one, or so it seems. I usually go straight for them, unless there are partners around, in which case I am usually trying to hide the fact that I'm sneaking out early and am therefore trying to be invisible.
Ah. In my building, the light over the next elevator goes on about five minutes before the elevator actually shows up, allowing us all to circle the elevator like a wounded kudu.
I always take the freight elevator at work (I'm on the 5th floor). It's twice as fast even without stops and nobody else is ever waiting for it.
The nose-to-the-door people in my building are neither Indian nor Israeli (honestly, the Israelis I've met who work around here are among the most socially adroit of anyone in the entire building).
I think the cause is probably closer to this, really.
I'm so courteous in elevators that it's legendary. Word has it that the halls of my undergrad dorm whisper with stories of my valiant rides.
The stairs are the way to go. Take the stairs people.
Even up in Minnesota Heebie is famous, under her real name.
Word has it that the halls of my undergrad dorm whisper with stories of my valiant rides.
Reminds me of a client who accused of an inappropriate relationship with a younger man. She kept using the unfortunate phrase, "I was riding him back and forth to practice."
Uh, yea, let's not use that expression at trial.
7: Portlanders [wait endlessly out of politeness] at 4-way stops too, through a combination of passive aggression and complete cluelessness when they're behind the wheel.
The first time I went to the pacific northwest, I was amazed to see somebody actually back out of the intersection at a four way stop, so as to let somebody else go first. There's such a thing as too polite, pedantiquettic weirdos.
Minnesota Heebie is actually my real name. I travel with the rodeo.
I would absolutely go to an Unfogged meetup if one were held at a rodeo.
Oh, I was wrong then. I thought you were Ethan Cohen, and that Jammies was Joel.
Ethan is also famous for his elevator behavior; you should meet him some time. I'm sure you'd have a lot in common.
53: a gay rodeo, maybe! Gay. Uh, rodeo. Uh. Divorce!
That'll show ya, Jammies!
Heebie is a rodeo clown, with a broken heart which she can only comfort by beating up circus clowns and mimes.
I have a rodeo right behind my house. Also a Christian radio station. I am the salt of the earth, did I tell you that?
There is something I've just noticed in the past few years where, especially if two or more women are about to cross the street at a stoplight and there is a car with dudes in it, the driver will magnanimously slow down and wave the women past, looking friendly, but then, when the women step into the intersection, they hoot loudly about how they get to look at the women's asses. Just in case you thought some guy was just being overly nice, it's really important to communicate that, in the end, you're just there for delectation.
Jammies is such a dick.
Twice over!
He's always got his dick on his shoulder.
59: I... really?
There's some assholes out there.
Just noticed!
Sometimes he'll just sit there and stroke it, in the middle of a business meeting.
They're not looking atyour ass, Sifu. That's not the point she was trying to make.
There's some assholes out there. Just noticed!
Sifu, most guys just check out the cheeks.
64: yes, but I am, and I'm reporting what I see.
How the hell could 66 possibly have been pwned? And yet.
Your extra assholes may be cause for concern.
Or you may be twice as productive.
Sifu, you see, Heebie's is the reigning ass around here. Bets not mess with her.
Okay, now this is just ridiculous. Get out of my head assholes, heebie!
I came here to chew carp and reign ass, and I'm aaaalll out of carp.
Bets not mess with her.
Bots net moss with her.
Ridiculous? Damn. I feel just awful now. Thanks a lot, Sifu.
74: bets not mess, Hoth. Whirrrrrrrr.
There's no such thing as intentions or absence of intentions. Or "meaning". Philosophy 101 taught be that.
That's OK, though. Everyone hurts me. Holding you responsible for your cruelty would itself be cruel.
Eeeeeeverybody hurts (Emerson) sometiiiiiiiiimes
I forgive you. You know that. There's no lingering resentment or fantasy of cruel revenge. Not in the slightest.
I am positive that "Jammies" is actually Emerson.
81: just when it was getting hot?
No, no, you need not fear my cruel revenge.
I am positive that "Jammies" is actually Emerson.
We can test this! Emerson, what does your arm say?
It has a nonrepresentational tattoo something like this.
We're experiencing verification / falsification!
That is NOT my Jammies! Not at all!
Being personally falsified really hurts. I feel like phlogiston at the moment.
Well, you know, being emo and everything.
Phlogiston didn't get a second chance, but maybe I'll find a niche somewhere.
The obsolete theory to explain oxidation? Go on. Try me.
Phlogiston is emo?
I am okay with that.
Is emo phlogiston?
I've always pictured you as emo, anyway. I've been meaning to ask, how can you see with your bangs in your eyes? And why are you wearing a ski cap covered in skulls in the middle of the summer? And it's cute how your sleeves are so long that you wear them over your hands, and then poke your thumb through that hole on the side.
Heebie, first you falsify me, and then you pry.
Phlogiston is a thing, not a theory. It just happens to be a thing that doesn't exist. People are so cruel.
People are cruel, when you're a crueller.
Phlogiston has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to phlogiston paradise, as it were.
I googled crueller before I typed it! It came up as a donutty pastry!
I understand how you feel about phlogiston, John.
When the still sea conspires in armor,
And her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters,
True sailing is dead.
Awkward instant:
And the first animal is jettisoned,
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop,
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over
People are Krull when you're a cruller.
I did not ever expect to see the material quoted in 102 in my RSS reader. I'm a little shocked the RSS protocol even supports propagating that.
44: I used to take the freight elevator at Ma Bell for the same reasons but then our busy-body building manager decided there was something unsettling and illicit about not walking through the main lobby and that taking the freight elevator was "insecure," despite requiring more badge checks than the normal route, and had the elevator made inaccessible.
You've gotta be Krull to be kind, in the right measure.
The moment someone offers me right of way, I immediately take it, and wave appreciatively. This applies to driving, walking, elevators, bikes, anything. Everyone else should be like me.
exactly
i often take it even if not offered
the avoids letting the other person have a power trip too
39: women and children first
Look seriously askance at any "rule" that groups women and children together. Consider, instead, treating us as actual grown-ups.
I and someone else (Cala maybe?) were quite eloquent on this subject in a recent thread but Google is not finding it in the archives.
(On preview, had to correct "threat" to "thread" above. Hmm.)
Treat children as actual grownups?
Treat children as actual grownups?
Make them take you out to dinner, wear a low-cut blouse, order the lobster and still refuse to put out.
Look seriously askance at any "rule" that groups women and children together.
Don't beat women or children. No, wait, make that just children.
Not the great chick-punching debate again!
I've mentioned this before, but there's a guy here in town who will not hit a woman but beat his son mercilessly and unpredictably. Our family knows both the son and the daughter, and (somewhat predictably) the son's a complete mess and the daughter's happy and confident.
Dick will make you slap somebody.
112: How about don't beat anybody? Except w-lfs-n.
115: Yay! More Alexyss! She makes me blush even while I am alone.
114: I have a friend whose father was the same way, and he's lovely, happy, funny, smart, and a great parent, while his sister is a completely fucked-up wreck.
How about don't beat anybody?
No, see, Jonah Goldberg deserves a good beating, and the world will be a better place once it happens. Lucianne Goldberg probably does too, but one shouldn't beat old women.
He who is lovely, happy, etc. = the friend, not the father.
Yay! More Alexyss!
Alexyss on why taking "50-feet dicks up [your] ass" is a bad idea.
117: Yup, a total killjoy. But OK on Jonah Goldberg, and I'll add Michael Vicks as well.
How about: Don't beat anybody unless they seriously deserve it. I will volunteer to be the arbiter of deservedness.
119: Toned down, this describes Buck and his sister. (Mercilessly and unpredictably, no, but strong and unreasonable expectations backed by corporal punishment, for him, indulgent coddling for her. He's functional, she isn't.)
I'll add Michael Vicks as well.
"Vick." Who needs to go to jail and lose a lot of income, but who hasn't been tied to harm of another human being. Unlike a sadly large number of other athletes.
Some people, such as Buck (and many women), need to be beaten. But I'm sure that you've figured that out by now.
The case I mentioned went very far beyond strict punishment. It was sadistic and unpredictable.
It was sadistic and unpredictable.
Our knowledge is imperfect, Emerson, and it grows in fits and starts. It's only because of prior mistakes that we have a better sense of precisely how much to beat a child.
I would imagine that Buck's kids need beating too. But I trust LB's judgment on this.
The case I mentioned went very far beyond strict punishment. It was sadistic and unpredictable.
Yeah, this sounds more like my friend, who has stories of things like being beaten and then thrown into the Christmas tree. I have no idea of the relative degrees of sadism, naturally.
128: Give me a break, Emerson. LB didn't attack you for anything you said, nor did anyone else. It's probably a bad idea to kick the shit out of your kid. This is news? People here are happy to proscribe much more than that. Does it really seem likely that they're out of sympathy with your friend?
Hm. I guess I'll have to revise my theory that beating kids sadistically is bad for them. Three anecdotes to one.
I never actually wanted to beat my son, but I can see now that I selfishly wronged him by thinking only of my own desires.
Eh? I thought Emerson was just goofin'.
My dad was beaten mercilessly and without reason pretty often as a kid, and he is a pretty deeply fucked-up person who tries really hard to seem normal. So sometimes it swings the other way.
I was just getting off on the idea of LB dressed up all kinky and whipping Buck.
130, 132: And I took it as goofing. Really, I didn't mean to come out for beating your kids, generally a terrible idea, just that where kids are being treated differentially, the one being treated 'better' isn't necessarily better off in the long run.
134: That'd be a peculiar picture. Can't see Buck going for it, myself.
134: I've been trying to figure out what it means when commenters say they're not making an argument, just noting something. Now I realize that most of it is related to private, prurient fantasies that desire non-rhetorical expression.
LB should be flattered, right. It's a real compliment, just like a stranger admiring her tits.
Buck needs a firm hand, as his father knew.
Oh, ick. Go back and have yourself some more herring.
