I don’t know how it is at your workplace, but in Latimer Hall at Berkeley, we have a thing called “lazy undergrads.” They like to do things like take the elevator from the first floor to the second, or the second floor to the first. My favorite is when they’re on the second floor, call the elevator, then realize it’s going to take too long, so they walk down the stairs, causing me to stop at 2 for nothing. But at least they learned about the use of stairs. Even worse, this week one of our elevators was out of service. Add this to the normal flow of grad lazy faculty and staff, and it becomes almost unbearable for the grad student needing to go down seven floors before he misses his NMR time. The experienced grad student will, of course, adapt to his surroundings and take advantage of alternate means of transportation, e.g. the freight elevator around the corner, elevators in the adjacent Tan Hall, or (gasp!) the stairs. Fortunately, the “normal” elevator was put back in service two days early, so our hero can revert to his usual strategy of using the Latimer elevators and complaining about lazy undergrads and lamenting the lack of an escalator for the staff that work on the fourth floor.