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mobile zombies in an elevator

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

In the office building where I work, we have some strange elevators. Frankly, I think there are just too many of them, you can't get to the end of the bank to catch half of them before they leave.

Anyway, today I had an odd experience entering an elevator. The door opened on 2F, which is the lowest floor, and there were three young adults (e.g. mid-twenties to maybe early thirties) there each lost in their phone. To my surprise, no one got off. I stepped in and pressed 17F. When we got to the top, all three got off with me. No one made any sign of being confused about where they were. I had the impression that they'd stepped into the elevator and then no one had pressed a destination floor, and they had just sat there, absorbed in their phones. I mean, it's either that or they had come down without meaning to? But it was too early in the morning for them to have been anywhere other than the 17th floor, because the other floors are for retail and the elevator won't even stop there before 09:00.

Chalk up another win to the mobile lifestyle, I guess.