Anger at elevators rises within seconds, experience shows. A good waiting time is in the neighborhood of fifteen seconds. Sometime around forty seconds, people start to get visibly upset." When they're waiting for an elevator, as well as when they're in an elevator, they don't really feel they can do much productive", says John Kendall, director of advanced technology at Otis. Antsy is the word James W. Fortune uses (odd how we project our haste on to these steady-paced insects). Once on board, our antsiness only intensifies as we wait for the door to close. How long? Door dwell, as the engineers call it, tends to be set at two to four seconds. For some, that is a long time, And not just Americans. "If you travel to Asia at all, you will notice that the DOOR CLOSE button in elevators is the one with the paint worn off," says Kendall. "It gets used more than any other button in the elevator. When they're in the elevator, they want to go."
— James Gleick, John Kendall, James W. Fortune, Faster by James Gleick