1.
You walk into an empty elevator to go down to the ground floor. Everything’s fine. You’ve missed the pre- and post-class rush, so the elevator should be fairly empty the whole way down, right? Wrong.
The elevator stops at the next floor. The doors open. Not one, not two, but six football players file in. Maybe you have nothing against football, maybe you do, but either way, football players are bigger than you, stronger than you, and louder than you, and they’re taking up pretty much all of the space in the elevator. Sure, it could be worse, but it’s hard to think of a less desirable way to spend your trip downstairs than pressed into the back corner while six men over six feet talk loudly to—and over—each other.
2.
You get into the elevator and your friend’s roommate’s friend is standing there. You’re not 100 percent sure of her name—definitely not sure enough to say it to her face. Still, you should probably say hi, but she’s not looking at you. You look a moment longer, waiting to see if she’ll look up so you can do that half-nod and mouth the word “hi.” She doesn’t, but as you look away, you see her look toward you out of the corner of your eye. Would it be too awkward to look immediately back to make eye contact? The elevator stops at the ground floor, and in the moment before the doors open, you look back to her. She’s still not looking at you, but before you look away, she looks up and you make eye contact. Before you have time for the acquaintance greeting, the doors open and both of you try to step out at the same time, completely ruining the possibility of a casual greeting.
3.
It’s 11:00 p.m. and you need to run over to Duane Reade before bed. When the elevator doors open, two people are already inside, and it’s clear that something has gone terribly wrong between them. Worse, one of them is a kid from your calc class, so you can’t not acknowledge each other after making prolonged eye contact
OK, so you can totally deal with a minute of tense silence, and then they’ll finish whatever argument they were having once you’re all out of the elevator, right? No. Apparently, that would be too much to hope for, since they start “talking”—a passive aggressive, pseudo-code from which you can very clearly gleam what it is they’re arguing about—again almost as soon as the doors close, and you have to stand in the midst of the totally-not-fight all the way down.
4.
The worst part about taking the elevator down to the basement is when someone else is taking it to the ground floor. You go down to One. Everything’s fine. Everyone else on the elevator gets off, leaving you alone, but then, more people start to file in, not checking to make sure the elevator’s actually going up. The doors close. The elevator lurches down and there’s a murmur—both confused and disappointed—from the crowd surrounding you. When the doors open on the basement, you have to excuse yourself out of the back of the elevator to make your way to the front, trying your best not to bump the confused students trying to get to their rooms.
5.
A normal day, a normal elevator ride: just you, your friend, and the guy you both matched with on Tinder. You both recognize him, but the real question is: does he recognize either of you? If so, does he recognize both of you? Just one? You’re not sure, and he won’t make eye contact—not that you’d want him to. Still, that means you have no way to tell if he realizes who you are and is therefore refusing to look at either of you, or if he’s just practicing good elevator etiquette by not forcing a greeting. Either way, your friend and you will for sure talk about it for the next two weeks or so whenever anyone brings up Tinder, elevators, or, let’s be honest, anything at all.