A Public Service Announcement...

[MiddleofNowhere]

The Escalators are NOT a RIDE!

We have one set of escalators in our store, one single up, one single down. A means of conveyance. Period. *a side note, we do have an elevator too!*

Since when have escalators made the change from a way to easily get from one level to another without expending too much energy to a ride for toddlers and small children to ride freely without adult supervision?????

Fie on all the fricking parents whoever even thought that the escalator was anything more than a way to get their fat asses upstairs. When I was a child, escalators ATE children, or at least that's the fear my parents put into me. Stand in middle, hand on the rail, step off at the end.

I don't know how many times I've had to scoop up a toddler who has sat/laid/rolled on the escalator and start to have either a piece of clothing sucked into the intake because no one taught them how to ride on an escalator and being a parent and actually going on the escalator with them and holding their hand is too tough for most of our inbred, hilljack customers.

And, if I have to hear one more freaking tantrum from some little hellspawn who wants to ride the escalator and the parents say no, we don't have time, we have to get to the Cheesecake Factory and stuff our already filthy, fat faces with oversize portions of overpriced food, I may go insane.

Sorry CS team. Today really sucked. It's like the holidays on crack already.

[PizzaDrone]

Escalators do seem to turn some people into idiots in fairness. Once, I was going down one that doesn't have stairs, but is just a ramp and in front of me was an older woman, another younger woman and a little girl. As we get to the bottom where its time to get off neither of them is watching the little one and she grabs hold of the end of it, making it impossible to move/get off the escalator. So of course everyone else keeps coming and its so dangerous cos this kid is either going to get squished or people are going to pile up and get stuck/hurt.

Eventually they discover whats going on and just leave, no apology to those behind at all.

Sadly there will always be some who refuse to acknowledge the world around them.

[Lady Legira]

I've never like escalators since I was a child and I found out I'm entirely justified when at Dragon*Con I slipped as I got on one. Thank dog for the man behind me who caught me as I fell all gothed up as I was. Got soon nice scrapes on my leg but the tights didn't ladder!

Escalators can be dangerous if like anything you don't follow the instructions.

[Evil Queen]

I hated escalators since I tripped getting off them. Owie.

[PizzaDrone]

Ooh just remembered that while out shopping the other day I saw someone running down the escalators going upwards. Really irks me because its just so dangerous and not needed. The down escalator is right next door to it....in fact about a few feet closer to where you came from!

[One-Fang]

Aw, but that's not as much FUN!!!

Yeah hacks me off too. Children going up the down one or down the up one because "it's fun".

Round these parts, they've started putting barriers up. Seems the thing to do is to hang off the outside of an up escalator and 'ride' the handrail up. What you are actually supposed to do should you get all the way to the top and the handrail disappears into its cavity, I really don't know. It's not like it's that easy to climb over it and into the escalator itself.

[Skeksin]

Wheaton Station Escalator! Whee!!

[AnaKhouri]

I agree about escalators; my old bookstore had one. Any time a class came through on a field trip (and when the hell did kids start going shopping on field trips? We went to museums and, oh, I don't know...educational places) it was a madhouse. Some of these kids were in high school too, but they came from rural areas mostly and so maybe they'd never seen one before.

I always walk up escalators. Henry Rollins (in one of his spoken-word CDs) has a hilarious bit on airport moving sidewalks and the idiots who don't maximize their ambulatory efficiency. He and I are agreed on this point.

My final word on the idiocy of escalator riders: shortly after I began working at old bookstore, a woman came in all pissed because she had been calling the GM for 2 DAYSOMG!! and he hadn't gotten back to her. Why was she calling? She wanted monetary compensation. Why? Because she had been riding on our escalator...and it scratched her shoe.

I almost laughed in her face, but managed to hold it in. Eventually I heard the GM had a spine for once and basically told her if she was stupid to know how to ride an escalator, she shouldn't go out in public.

[powerboy]

The Escalators are NOT a RIDE!

Yes they are. You ride them going up and ride them going down

[mattm04]

They are also not a place for you to carry several shopping bags and try to balance a stroller with a infant inside.

[Polenicus]

Escalators are useful transportation devices that can be dangerous if due caution and common sense are not applied when using. Therefore, they attract stupid people like raccoons to an upended garbage can. It's like they have a pent up NEED to prove Darwinism right, and therefore flock to whatever available means there are to remove themselves from the gene pool.

I think it's a corollary of Murphy's Law: 'If there's a way to maim or kill themselves gruesomely with it, they will'

[Shards]

Sorry, but I can't resist.

"I love escalators, because they never break, they simply temporarily become stairs."

[Belari]

I'm scared of escalators still. My parents did a very good job of instilling that healthy sense of fear in me. Aided by videos. *shudder*

We don't have one in our store, but when I go elsewhere that does, I do not hesitate to berate idiots who are playing on them. Not because I care whether *they* get hurt. More because I'm afraid they'll cause *me* to get hurt.

[cheshirephoenix]

Ah, I remember in my LP days at a store rhyming with beers that when we would check the escalators on camera and we had dinguses who knew better playing on them we would ever-gleefuly overhead page: "Security to the escalators, security to the escalators!" Then said dingus would look around startled, then shamefully and quickly walk away. It works! Muahaha.

[smileyeagle1021]

I've done the running up the down escalator thing

Then again, that was back in high school and we were having a competition to see who was fastest... and before anyone goes too hard on us we were doing this at a mall where the second floor was entirely closed for renovations (but for some reason they had left the escalators open and running ) so there was practically zero probability that we were getting in anyone's way or risking anyone's safety other than our own (and lets be honest, the best part of being a teen is doing that stupid stuff that you knew you shouldn't do but did anyway... and hey, you didn't get killed, so it was fun )