The Lit Button Has Been Pressed for Certainty

The button was lit when she arrived.

She pressed it anyway.

She knew the button was lit. She could see the button was lit. The lit state of the button was its entire communicative purpose: it said that someone had already pressed it, and the elevator had received this information, and the elevator was coming.

She pressed it because it felt wrong not to.

The man who arrived thirty seconds later pressed it too. He glanced at her first, a small social check: she had pressed it, so pressing it was what one did here.

The third person pressed it without looking at anyone. This was the action of someone who had pressed lit elevator buttons many times and had stopped wondering why.

Under the governing rule, once elevator button duplication feels polite, people must continue it even when nobody benefits.

The press changes nothing about the elevator's trajectory. The elevator does not interpret a second press as urgency. The elevator does not move faster. The elevator moves at the speed it was already moving, toward a floor that had already been requested.

The doors opened.

Everyone entered.

Nobody pressed the button inside the elevator more than once, because inside the elevator the rules are different and everyone knows it, though nobody could say exactly why.