Covid-19 is changing lift etiquette

By Tom Standage

On March 23rd 1857, the world’s first passenger lift started carrying customers up and down the Haughwout Building, a five-storey department store in New York. It had been installed by Elisha Otis, inventor of a device that prevented the elevator from falling if its cable snapped. The owner of the department store thought the novelty of a lift would attract curious shoppers, who might then stay and buy things. Soon elevators were being installed in office and apartment buildings in New York, and, in combination with steel-frame construction, they enabled them to soar to new heights. Taller buildings, in turn, led to a leap in population density. The result was the skyscraper-filled megacity. The most valuable floors in a building were no longer those near the ground, but the ones at the top, away from the stink and noise of the street.

Even as it transformed the urban landscape, the elevator also prompted more subtle shifts within its own four walls, as new etiquette emerged. Early lifts had instructions posted inside and out: enter and leave swiftly, and face the door while inside. (This custom may have arisen because some early lifts had a bench along the back wall, so riders naturally ended up facing forwards.) By the late 1880s, however, as elevators became widespread, men found themselves facing a dilemma: should they doff their hats if a lady entered the lift? Because elevators could be considered both a private room and a public conveyance, the correct etiquette was unclear. The New York Times suggested a compromise in 1886: in elevators serving crowded public buildings men could keep their hats on, but in hotels or private apartment buildings they should remove them.

Most customs governing lift interactions emerged in a less proscriptive way. Anyone who works in an office building will be familiar with the unwritten rule that the inhabitants of a lift should (as well as facing forwards) always divide the space in the lift equally between them; it is considered impolite not to stand as far as possible from other riders. Another convention is that conversation should be kept to a minimum, with riders staying silent or exchanging curt greetings at most. Unless they are stepping into an empty lift, people having a conversation should pause it for the duration of their ride, so as not to exclude others. Eye contact is best avoided. Keeping people waiting by asking them to hold the lift is considered uncouth. Singing, whistling, eating or farting are forbidden. And even failing to face forwards can disconcert other riders.

These familiar rules now face a complete rewrite in the age of coronavirus, as offices, hotels and apartment buildings devise ways to keep lifts running while maintaining social distancing. The number of people allowed into lifts is being drastically limited, with marks on the floor to show where they should stand. Facing the walls, rather than forward, may be the new norm. Masks will probably be mandatory. In South Korea, not talking in lifts has gone from being polite to compulsory. Pressing buttons is best done with elbows or keys. Riders still enter and leave swiftly; after all, who wants to spend time cooped up in a box with other people?

What once seemed normal, if occasionally awkward, now seems a more frightening prospect, particularly because it’s unclear how long virus particles linger in the air after an infected person leaves a lift. (A forthcoming horror movie about the virus, “Corona”, features a group of strangers trapped in an elevator.)

The original rules of lift etiquette took decades to emerge and evolve. The new ones are being forcibly imposed much faster. There are few things people fear more than social awkwardness in confined spaces – but covid-19 is probably among them.■

Image: Getty