Why Were Lift Attendants So Important And Where Did They Go?

There are a lot of elements of passenger lifts that used to be vitally important standards but now only exist as either a memory or a legacy artefact of the way society used to be.

Alongside lift music, the other major part of the early lift experience was the lift attendant, known as an elevator operator in the United States.

Whilst ostensibly their job was simply to push a button or pull a lever in response to a request to change the floor, in practice the job of a lift attendant was somewhat more specialised and multifaceted than it might appear.

Early lifts were lever-operated, with fully automated passenger lifts only starting to appear in 1918, half a century after the invention of the safety lift. Because of this, early lifts were both quite complex and difficult to safely operate by visitors who were still less than familiar with the concept.

It also required skill to stop the lift on the right floor at the right time manually before automated systems made this a formality.

However, whilst most lift attendants were rendered surplus to requirements once automatic lifts reached a level of mature sophistication that most buildings had at least one, they did not entirely go away.

ded them to function, whilst the Stockholm Concert Hall required an operator to be there to check tickets at street level.

High-speed lifts and lifts in luxury buildings such as department stores still have lift attendants, partly as a form of crowd control, partly to act as a greeter or tour guide, and in some cases to help operate the lifts in a safe manner.

In other cases, however, the lift attendant simply stopped being needed; as people became 

more comfortable with lifts and as they became so simple to use that anyone could push a button and get to the floor they wanted, an extra person handling the controls was surplus to requirements.