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Comment by steve19 | Hacker News Reader

I will belive that when I see workers walking up stairs, not just the type A's looking at their Apple Watch step counter, instead of escalators ;)

I think its mostly landlords wanting to look like office buildings not retail space.

YouTube is quite proud of the employee-only slide they have between two floors (might be gone, haven't visited in a couple of years)

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I think, like many fitness things, it's actually as much of a discipline thing as anything else.

When we're confronted with an escalator next to stairs, we take the escalator out of laziness, even though we wish we didn't.

But we'd actually prefer there not to be an escalator at all, so we'd have to walk.

Same thing as when you choose not to keep snacks at your desk because you know you'll eat them.

We prefer an environment that nudges us in the right direction, precisely because we don't always have the discipline we wish we had.

Guess I must be a weirdo. Given a set of stairs next to an escalator, I always the stairs.

I also lean towards the stairs (or at least not just standing on the escalator), but in my experience it's like 80/20 or "worse" between people who go for the escalator vs the stairs. Of the escalator crowd though, there are a good chunk who prefer to walk rather than stand.

Stairs are faster and better exercise than (standing on) escalators. I guess you can make the argument that walking up escalators is faster, but stairs are almost always wider and less congested, whereas getting stuck standing on an escalator happens all the time anywhere busy.

I always do this, it typically happens at airports, and I take pleasure in arriving at the other end faster as well. I'm going to sit on a plane for hours why would I want to pass up the opportunity to get some meager exercise beforehand?

If I'm going to sit in a cramped, poorly ventilated space, I'm doing everything in my power to avoid sweating beforehand, including taking the escalator.

I've had the opposite problem before - I preferred to take the stairs, but they shoved them off in the corner and put the elevator in the center of the building.

i actually prefer a wide escalator so i can walk up/down (and around the standers) and get both speed and a workout. =)

I live in London, where escalator lane discipline is very good - mostly because if you fail to stand on the right you will get jostled by 80kg of fast moving commuter.

It's a culture shock going to places where people stand on both sides blocking the way through.

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