Attack of the stealth elevator

My illustrious employer recently relocated to a new office building. It has a very dramatic, imposing lobby with multiple banks of elevators -- you know the type. If you want floors 1-15, you go to this bank, and if you want floors 15-30, you go to this other bank over here. If you inadvertently get on at the wrong bank of elevators and the doors shut before you realize it, you either have to go back to the lobby and start over, or go to floor 15 and see if you can cross over to the other bank. As if that weren't enough, there is a very large escalator right next to the elevators. It goes from the ground floor to a mezzanine floor where you can access the parking garage via a suspended glass walkway over a service driveway. Or you can just take the elevator up to level 2 and do the same.

All of which is to say, it is a very modern, extremely confusing lobby. Despite all of that, the thing that troubles me most about this lobby is the stealth elevator.

I have ridden a lot of elevators in my time, and I might even be considered an expert on the process: you push the UP button, then wait until one of the elevator arrow lights illuminates and you hear that distinctive "ding" that announces the imminent arrival of the elevator to whisk you away.

Well, the elevators in this new lobby aren't so cooperative. They make at best a muted "ding" upon arrival and then hurry away so silently that if you have your back turned to the one which arrives, it can come and go before you know it was there. It took me a while to figure out what was happening. On more than one occasion, I pressed the UP button, then rifled through some papers or checked text messages while waiting for the usual signal that an elevator was on its way. After an unusually lengthy wait, I looked up to see that the UP button was no longer lit. At first I thought the buttons were broken.

After a few times, I noticed what was happening, and I saw it happen to other hapless souls, too. One morning I came in and saw one of my coworkers at the far end of the bank of elevators, staring out the window. I came over and pushed the UP button, which wasn't lit. He noticed me do so and said, "That's so weird... I've pushed that button twice now." I'm sure he had. If you don't watch like a hawk -- if you turn your back for even a couple of seconds -- if you do even a moment's navel-gazing -- that elevator will swish silently up and away with nary a telltale sign.

My new procedure is to push the UP button, stand way back where I have a clear view of all the elevators, and focus my gaze on the lights above the elevators. Several times I have stepped into an elevator while another prospective rider stood obliviously with his back to me, only realizing an elevator had arrived when I "ahemed" in order to politely indicate that I was going to be forced to push the "close door" button if he didn't come to his senses and get on. A couple of times, to be honest, I was in a rush and didn't bother. Stealth elevators -- like most things in life, I guess, have their pros and cons.