Riding elevators can be tough: look up or down? At the person or at the door? Watch the little TV or pull out the smart phone? Say “Hi” or not?
So many decisions.
But there is one—one—thing that stands out head and shoulders above all else when it comes to elevator etiquette… and it’s this:
Happy travels!
(By the way, Lois, who I mention in the video, runs Aquire, a tech company that automates the process of creating org charts—cool stuff, especially if you’re trying to cascade succession/replacement planning in a matrix organization. Both of us thought elevator etiquette was a topic sorely underrepresented in the annals of etiquette training. That said, I do have to own my statements in the video alone…)
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
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Lol, Shut your face is valuable advice for many situations.
You nailed it Jason, shut your face is right. And keep it shut on the train, in the airport, at restaurants, etc. Confidential means confidential.
I once had a senior director actually commit a HIPAA violation in the elevator. The look on their face when the other director said “I’m glad you reported your own violation to HR directly” was priceless.
Minion–Probably not my most eloquent…
Shauna beat me to it – as I watched the video, I thought the same thing, ‘shut your face’ is sound advice in a wide spectrum of contexts.
Now a-days if people become anything like us, it is more like 2 to 3 degrees of Kevin Bacon!
Other valuable advice:
Shut your pie hole
Ferme ta bouche (shut your mouth in french)
That is all
@Steve—Yes indeed…
@Benjamin—2 to 3 degrees… at most!
Jason- Great Advice. Here is my takeaway. Shhhh.. Don’t Speak.
Adding to Carol’s thoughts, I have seen colleagues fired for stuff said in cabs (downtown cabbies tend to collect at the same cab stands around the major buildings, and repeated what an associates said to a partner), all the way to stuff posted on social media. Public is public.
So, with the Gen-Y stuff you’re absorbing, do you see this primarily as young person’s sin built on lack of judgment, lack of perceived jeopardy, sense of entitlement … or something cross-generational?
If it’s the former, does this dovetail with the completely misunderstood concept of privacy? If the latter, is it nothing more than the same ego-driven “I know something, therefore I’m going to say ot out loud to sound important” nonsense that undermines everyone?
@Shennee—Thanks.
@John—Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly we are to assume we live in a bubble while decrying others for their bubblicious attitudes? Dangerously, I watched a group of four teens step out in front of my car without ever once looking up… screeching tires, horn, everything, and they never looked up once. So is some of it a matter of self-absorption and lack of judgment? Absolutely.
But it’s also them emulating what they see around them: CEOs and politicians sit for interviews and explain their media tactics in real time while delivering polished messages to mass media, e.g. Gen Y ain’t dumb, they just figure it’s a big game… because, well, it is.
Of course, some of it also is ego-feeding. But generally, I find it’s a lack of awareness. People just figure no one’s listening… or they have a misplaced sense of trust that information shared out-of-channel won’t be used against them later. Remember The Breakfast Club? The janitor gives the students there the same speech, about how he knows all their secrets because people talk in front of him as if he didn’t exist. It’s not a new problem, and not confined to Gen Y, near as I can tell.
Don’t be a snitch! Let them talk !!!!
@lifts—It could just be me, but I see a difference between snitching and calling people out for being utter morons.