So, I had this realization today, after something that has happened dozens of times over the last few years. It made me chuckle a bit. Wonder if you might get a chuckle out of it too.
I have an office in a program building but have to go to another building several times a week for meetings and the like. This meeting building has 3 floors and 3 parking lots. The handicapped parking place is near the ground floor entrance and that is where I usually enter. I use a wheelchair to cover the long distances within the building from place to place and so I used the elevator to get from the first to the third floor. Often, when I arrive at the building I will run into colleagues and we will be talking together about the issues de jour. When I get on the elevator, they turn and go up the stairs. We arrive at the third floor at approximately the same time and often times rejoin the conversation. This seems strange to me. Are they afraid to ride the elevator with me? Self conscious about my disability? Health nuts? Are they just so set in their ways they don’t even notice the incongruity of this situation?
Common sense says to me that they would ride up to the third floor, continuing the conversation, but on dozens of occasions, this has not happened. I can only remember 1 or 2 times that people have done this out of maybe the last 50 times I did the 3 floor office meeting. It seems sort of funny to me. At first when I was thinking about this, I started off thinking it was a bit rude, sort of like talking on the phone when we are having a face to face meeting. Sure sometimes the phone call has to be taken (I do not overestimate my importance to others) but to me the generally polite thing to do would be to tell the phone caller you are meeting with someone and will call back later. In the case of the elevator, I would think that the polite thing to do would be just to step into the elevator and continue the conversation. But as I thought it through, I just don’t think it is rude but I’m not sure what it is. Anyone have any thoughts about this or similar experiences?
2 comments:
Its really quite interesting post, which includes lot of funny related stories which are really excellent.
It's good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource, thanx now i have the link which i was looking for my research.
Post a Comment