You are packed in the elevator, fortunately right behind someone who smells OK. Packed none the less. You wish you had not watched those zombie movies. This elevator is packed because lots of people want to ride. And on every floor the elevator stops, and other people who want to ride stare at the people who are already in there, and wait for the doors to close and the next elevator to come. Next floor: repeat.

Elevators must have some sort of weight sensor that will fuss if it is too heavy. I propose that when the elevator is heavy, it conclude that it is full of people. The full elevator should proceed to a destination floor to disgorge a few, and not stop along the way to pick up more.
-- bungston, Nov 06 2013

There's a Holiday Inn near Boston that has an elevator that politely tells you when it's full and won't budge until somebody gets off. This idea is the next logical evolution.

It might be a Holiday Inn Express.
-- Alterother, Nov 06 2013


How about an elevator that measures weight and height upon entrance and says, "take the stairs, fatty" when appropriate?
-- swimswim, Nov 06 2013


Wow obese people are going to form an advocacy group, if they're not too fat and lazy.
-- rcarty, Nov 06 2013


//Does it charge obese folks a surcharge?//

<assembles portable soap-box>

I'd say, only if it gets to charge a surcharge on every other psychological and physical ailment known to man.
Are you sure you'd like to have your own demons weighed against other peoples?

<disassembles portable soap-box>
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 06 2013


I've already seen this. Either the Residence Inn or the Doubletree in Atlanta GA does this (don't remember which year it was).

To do it right, it needs a better algorithm to determine which floor to start at, because it's royally frustrating when the elevator goes all the way up, makes it about halfway down, and then shoots the rest of the way to the lobby, and you can't get an elevator for half an hour or more (literally once walked down from the seventh floor, had breakfast, and my return to my room was the first time the elevator stopped on that floor since I pressed the button to go down).
-- MechE, Nov 06 2013


// once walked down from the seventh floor, had breakfast, and my return to my room was the first time the elevator stopped on that floor since I pressed the button to go down//

How did you know?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 06 2013


//How did you know?//

He remembers the meal.
-- AusCan531, Nov 07 2013


Because one of the people who showed up while I was first waiting, and who didn't have the option of walking down seven flights of stairs, got on when I got back.
-- MechE, Nov 07 2013


Perhaps the doorway to the elevator could be covered by a mechanism akin to that found in a creel or lobsterpot: when the elevator is at the ground floor, and empty, the funnel points into the body of the lift, and passengers can clamber up the narrowing, rising funnel and drop down onto the crash mat on the lift floor; when the elevator is full, the funnel points up and out of the lift, into the hall, allowing you to plop, briefcase n'all, onto the carpet tiles.
-- calum, Nov 07 2013


Yes, that is the solution for which we have been searching all this time. I cannot envision a safer or more efficient means of traveling between floors than a non-stop elevator with a reversible weir gate where passengers go leaping in and out like business-casual salmon.
-- Alterother, Nov 07 2013


Calum's improvement on my mundane idea puts me to shame. I wish only that it be posted with liberal and lascivious illustration that I might grant it a bun and also buns from all my shadow accounts.

I envision the illustration in the style of Hieronymous Bosch.
-- bungston, Nov 07 2013


// "take the stairs, fatty" when appropriate? //

That makes about as much sense as having a camera with image recognition software that triggers a recording of "Sorry, no ugly people. Make the world a better place - why don't you climb the stairs to the roof and then throw yourself off ?"
-- 8th of 7, Nov 07 2013


You end up with a flat dead ugly person. It does not reduce the ugly meter one bit.
-- popbottle, Nov 07 2013


Packed elevator with fatties or thinnies still packed. I prefer the fatties, because one occupies the place of 3 thinnies but breathes only 1/3 as much sweet sweet air. Total weight is what I am talking about here, without any pejorative implications.
-- bungston, Nov 07 2013



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