Have you ever been inside, or wait for an elevator for quite a long while? Sorry dear, if you have; but you got the chance to continuously stare at yourself in the mirror of the elevator, and probably had some time to check up on your hairstyle or makeup, even your outfit. This made you quite patient for a while. Mirrors in elevators are designed for special reasons. Let’s learn why.
Related media: Why The Elevators Have Mirrors?
I Don’t Wanna Wait In Vain For You
We are all going to agree on this, that, waiting really sucks. Spending long hours, even minutes for something is a boring situation to find yourself in. You might have noticed that a lot of elevators have mirrors inside them. This is no coincidence or some fancy architectural design to attract some applause. It’s an amazing feet of brilliant civil engineering with a history behind it.
They are placed there by civil engineers for a specific reason. Mirrors are usually hang near or inside elevators so people have something to do while they wait for the doors to open. Yes, hotel lobbies have been fooling you into patiently waiting for years. This is meant to keep you at ease with yourself by staring at yourself. Do you feel a little bit patient now? You should.
Hold On… Just A Little Bit Longer
Alex Stone explained where this idea originated from in an article published by The New York Times magazine. He writes:
“The idea was born during the post-World War II boom, when the spread of high-rises led to complaints about elevator delays. The rationale behind the mirrors: give people something to occupy their time, and the wait will feel shorter. With the mirrors, people could check their hair or slyly ogle other passengers. And it worked: almost overnight, the complaints ceased.”
Such an idea of comfort has really caught up with people, and its hardly ever noticed that waiting for the elevator door to open is hectic. We normally admire staring at ourselves in mirrors — especially our ladies — for quite a while to get our makeup on and outfit right for an occasion. No wonder civil engineering had such an idea in mind to make the waiting in an elevator bearable.
The Wait Is Over
The reason why people hate waiting is because they think time waiting for something is time wasted, and they could have used that time for something else productive. This idea of “time-being-wasted” is the rationale behind this civil engineering of placing a mirror around and inside an elevator. And the pacing nature of the 21st century makes our impatience even worse. What could really keep you patient while you wait for something?
As Chelsea Wald of Nautilus also explained in an article:
“The fast pace of society has thrown our internal timer out of balance. It creates expectations that can’t be rewarded fast enough — or rewarded at all. When things move more slowly than we expect, our internal timer even plays tricks on us, stretching out the wait, summoning anger out of proportion to the delay.”
Could the notifications on our smartphones, or the poor internet connections make us more impatient of waiting?
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Written by: Nana Kwadwo, Thu, Dec 27, 2018.