The "alarm button" in the elevator.

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"Färgad" (coloured) is a PC term here, so forgive me if I've come across as offensive.

Perhaps they mean they're afraid they might get sucked into the escalator belt. I used to be terrified of that happening when I was little.

no I've just constantly confused elevators and escalators all my life. Most people around me always think it's weird that elevators just magically transform into stairs on me

In English the PC term would be "person of color". "Colored" is the opposite, it's offensive. I'd recommend that in English you don't use "colored".

Hehe yes. We had this crazy old cage elevator in my old building and it was fun to mess with. If you messed with it too much though, you'd get stuck and it would take the elevator crew 4 hours to drive out and rescue you. XD XD I never got stuck, but it happened at least once a week to someone or other. Everyone liked to screw with that thing.

Yup. I'm always tempted to do that.

As a kid I once tried to set off a fire alarm in the bank, but didn't press on the glass hard enough. My poor mother...

On some of the more modern elevators which go between more than 2 floors, ones in building with 3 or more floors, by holding the "door close" button when you push your floor number, the elevator will go directly to that floor even if someone on a a floor between yours and the one you're going to pushes a button.

In many cases, the "door close" or (>|<) button only works for maintenance purposes, yet from what I've heard from maintenance technicians, the "door close" button is the one button that has to be replaced more than any other button because of impatient people who think that pushing it multiple times or pushing it harder will make the elevator go faster. He said that there was one office building in Boston where the button was only for maintenance purposes and only worked when a the key was turned to "maintenance mode", yet he had to replace the button at least once 4 times a year because people would push it too hard and it would break.

The bottom line is, you can't win. Because even if you use the politically correct term, once you've gotten completely accustomed to that, it will change again. Or what's PC in one place is completely out of line in another place. My in-laws, who are from England and in their 60's say "coloured", and they don't mean anything offensive at all. People should just let each other use a variety of words, and trust that no offense is meant. That's just my humble opinion.

Very true, especially when the politically correct term makes no sense. Here in the US, the politically correct term for "black" is "African-American" The problem here is that this means that people who decend from India, or the Carribean, places that are not in Africa are therefore African-American. It was like that for a while, now you're supposed to say Indian-American or Carribean-American, and if you can't instantly tell the difference between someone of African decent and Carribean decent just by looking at them, you're a racist beacuse "you think all black people look the same". Someone once asked me if I thought that all black people look the same, my response was "yes, they do, but so do white people, if you can't tell the difference between someone of Irish decent and someone of French decent (which I can't) just by looking at them, how does it make me racist to have something in common with you?"

But I digress since we're starting to turn this thread about elevators into a thread about racism. There's already plenty of threads on racism on here, and very few about elevators.

Take this one for example <- link

Thought about it before, but that was when I was so anxious that I was afraid to draw attention to myself. I might do it now though.....

Never pressed the alarm button, but I have pressed the emergency phone button in the dorm elevator to see what would happen. I got a busy signal and then it disconnected. Makes me feel so safe...

I have never pressed it before but I have wondered what would happen if I did press it.