I live by Gudrun’s selfless example.
I’m sorry, I worded my post poorly. I did not mean to minimize your own experiences by implying that any discomfort I might feel by being addressed while engaged in the preferably private business of voiding my bladder is akin to the “pee shyness” you describe. I don’t have trouble urinating when others are present; I just think it’s an uncomfortable time to shoot the shit. As it were. I know a couple of people who experience pee shyness, and it sounds like hell.
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It ain’t so bad. I can pee anywhere on this whole earth comfortably. As long as I know nobody’s watching me.
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Glad you don’t work here:
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They’re always watching you.
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Clearly you’ve never been to boot camp or prison.
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That’s just fucking awful. I can’t figure out how to feel about it… Grimly satisfied I can piss in trump’s mouth, or just grossed out by cruzdroid’s calibration-stare.
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Nope, not yet. My rugged individuality (as manifested by an ironclad insistence on Poopin’ Privacy) has yet to be beaten out of me.
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I think people behave themselves in elevators because misbehaving has unpredictable consequences.
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My office elevator has doors on two sides. One opens to the lobby, the other opens to the second floor. It seems most people tend to stand sideways but it’s an unusual enough configuration that social norms don’t really apply.
I fart in there all the time.
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While it’s true Layne Longfellow holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, he has never actually done any research into elevator behavior, and is therefore not an expert on this particular matter. He became the “go-to ‘expert’” arbitrarily.
He explains here:
It’s the mid-1970s, and I am in my office, Director of Executive Seminars at The Menninger Foundation. My phone rings, and my friend Ralph Keyes, the writer, says, “I’m doing an article for New York magazine on how to behave in an elevator. I’d like to interview you.”
“Ralph, I know nothing about it and have never given it a second thought.”
“I know, but you have a prestigious position as a psychologist and you’re funny, so make something up.”
I leaned back in my swivel chair, tossed my feet up on my desk, gazed unfixedly into the trees outside my window, and said some things that I thought were, in fact, funny - but also true. Ralph published the article, and then my phone REALLY began to ring - I had entered the world’s media archives as an expert on elevator behavior.
For years after, some new media source would track me down and I would give the authoritative word on the subject.
The apotheosis came in the 1980s, in my home in Phoenix. The voice on the line this time said, “I’m doing an article on elevator behavior for the LA Times. It will be on the front page, lefthand column.” [That’s the most significant placement available.]
Okay, I thought, it’s time to 'fess up. So I told her the entire story that you’ve just read above, all about how I had done no research but obliged my writer friend.
Clearly his method was not very scientific, yet Weird Universe still calls him “the most widely cited expert on this subject” and then proceeds to quote from the above text (omitting the part where Longfellow explicitly states he did no research). Usually the phrase “widely cited” in the context of academia refers to scholars citing other scholars’ scholarship in their own work, but Weird Universe absurdly uses it to mean journalists quoting scholars making things up. Layne Longfellow, btw, is not widely cited according to Google Scholar.
Furthermore, Weird Universe cites just two sources, the 1977 NY Mag and 1982 LA Times articles mentioned in the Longfellow quote above, meaning that whatever legitimate scientific research informing Weird Universe’s post isn’t from primary sources (e.g. research papers) and is probably outdated.
I’ll give Alex at Weird Universe the benefit of the doubt and believe it wasn’t intentional, but either way, the post propagates misinformation and it fails to properly investigate “elevator proxemics.” It’s a bit disappointing, as the topic deserves better.
The post also neglects to mention that Layne Longfellow today identifies as a “social philosopher” and no longer conducts psych research, now focusing on the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (presumably an ancestor). His website is a splendid mess.
Finally, it’s important to recognize that even if Longfellow was an expert on human behavior in elevators, the seven normative items in the “How to Behave in an Elevator” list would still be bullshit, because knowing how we behave in an elevator ≠ knowing how we should behave in an elevator.
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Damn, that’s a beautiful suplex.
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They’re peeing into the door obviously.
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Better to be on the inside pissing out, I guess?
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Better to be standing to the side when you push the call button.
Oops, thought it was a joke, didn’t watch. I wouldn’t have liked it if I’d gotten that.
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Anything. Just don’t use the stairs FFS! Exercise should only take place in the gym.
Irrational?
Maybe not so irrational.
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At Glastonbury festival there used to be a set of urinals right by one of the main tracks that run through the site. There’s just a chest high sheet of metal that you piss on between you and the hundreds of people walking past. I had no problem with it, but I imagine if you were pee-shy it would be your worst nightmare.
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