bjones
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All close door buttons in elevators work, but not in the way you are thinking. If you want to ask if the close door buttons actually close the doors, then the answer is that most of them do not. Nearly all elevator doors close on a timer system, and nothing can override the timer to make the doors close sooner. However, there are exceptions.
The biggest exception about the non-functional elevator door buttons are elevators outside the United States. The percentage of operational door buttons rises dramatically. Some blame this phenomenon on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which necessitated the timer/motion sensor system.
Some elevator close door buttons are simply left unwired. It would take only one small wire to make it functional, but it is deliberately made non-functional. Some elevator close door buttons worked when the elevators were new, but the buttons have since broken. Some of buttons are, in fact, functional, but they require a key to be turned for service personnel or firefighter use.
Many elevator close door buttons that are non-functional are made specifically never to be operational. They are just buttons connected to nothing but a spring and have no wiring associated with them at all. These types of buttons are called placebo buttons.
Placebo buttons are there for one reason only: to give you a slight feeling of satisfaction. They make you feel like you have some power or control over the elevator. Placebo buttons are used in many applications. Have you ever called a customer service center? Oftentimes after you provide some bits of information, you can hear the unmistakable sound of typing. In many cases, these keyboards are not connected to anything. They are just noisemakers that trick you into thinking the customer service representative is doing a lot of work to help you out.
Another type of placebo button is more of a dial, but newer ones can have buttons: office thermostats. Some experts believe that up to 90 percent of thermostats accessible to employees in office buildings don’t do anything except provide a little feeling of control to the person adjusting the temperature. Some electrical companies have even verified that sometimes they connect a little motor that makes a sound like a blower to make it sound like something actually happened.
 Posted 4811 day ago
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