I've never been to China but wouldn't you learn quickly after getting in an elevator going the wrong way not to do that again?
The only exception I can see if there's way more people than elevators and you just need to get spot at all costs.
See also: the keep open / close doors button. I had one building administrator explain to me we should add a delay of 10 seconds to the "quickly shut door" button because otherwise she kept getting her arm hit by the door. When I asked why we would add a delay to the button that's meant to reduce delays (why not simply wait for the door to close on its own, then?), and whether we should fix the sensor that prevents doors from closing if there's an obstacle instead, she just kept staring blankly at me. I don't think she understood me at all.
Again, some people simply don't grasp how elevators work.
And of course a few minutes later we’re freezing or roasting. She sees the temps setting as controlling intensity of cold/hot rather than just, you know, the temperature you want.
Look up the early history of elevators and you'll see a progression from fully manual in-car up/down controls (often with a dedicated human operator); various semi-automatic systems with minor improvements like automatic leveling and door control; and then operatorless systems that started with nondirectional calls:
https://liftescalatorlibrary.org/paper_indexing/papers/00000...
"2.3 Non-directional collective Non-directive collective control provides a single pushbutton at each landing. This pushbutton is pressed by passengers to register a landing call irrespective of the desired direction of travel. Thus, a lift travelling upwards, for example, and detecting a landing call in its path stops to answer the call, although it may happen that the person waiting at the landing wishes to go down. This type of control is only acceptable for short travel lifts."
this is hilarious
I have to assume this is a cultural difference and you just don't have those indicators where you live, rather than "slightly moving my eyes is too hard, better make my problem into somebody else's problem"
As for button pressing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#As_a_metaphor
Although I guess that's not quite what you're talking about.
It's probably just the old 'fake loader' psychology, to be honest. Waiting without knowing when the elevator will arrive is boring/frustrating, where getting into an elevator that moves, even if the wrong direction, feels like progress.
Things are happening, and even if it takes longer ultimately that's a less frustrating state to be in.
Like let's say elevator is at 5, I am at 1 wanting to go to 3, and before I arrive there is already someone else at 1 wanting to go to -1.
I'll get in with them going DOWN so that it doesn't have to stop a 2nd time on the way up.
There are also other situations where I'll press it in the wrong direction if I think it's already likely to stop on the way down (due to me being on a popular floor) to save an extra stop on the way back up.
The reason? Other factors that were important to me!
Examples:
- cost optimisation. I could fly business within company budget rules.
- flight time. I highly valued longer flight times between Europe and the US west coast so I got a proper night's sleep when flying east-bound. Doing connections on the east coast often meant quite short transatlantic flights that arrived very early in the morning. Much harder to manage the jetlag.
- Product offering. Some of the routes from AMS and CDG had much newer planes and cabins.
- Airline alliance loyalty. Given the travel pattern it meant sense to pick an alliance that delivered some value. Irish airlines didn't have much to offer and were much more expensive for a worse end to end product.