Buttons. We friggin love ‘em. Doesn’t matter what they do, if anything at all, we wanna push ‘em. Nay, we have to push ‘em. It’s as though we, as a race, have been carefully bred by an external force, resulting in a species of compulsive buttonists who don’t even require stimulus for their Pavlovian pushing to commence. Who did the breeding? Aliens? God(s)? Lonely buttons from another dimension? And why? To make us into George Jetson-like slaves? Merely for sport? Or perhaps for a more erotic purpose? I have no bloomin’ idea. I do, however, have a Bloomin’ Onion, which I got through the magic of button pushing. Telephone buttons for ordering, door buzzer for letting in deliveryman, dishwasher button for cleaning sole patented Bloomin’ Onion fork, microwave for re-heating hour-old Bloomin’ Onion.
Buttons can do a lot of great stuff. They can call a nurse when you’re sick, call a stewardess when you need a refill of your mimosa, or call a butler when you need the toilet flushed. They can adjust the volume of your favorite song, adjust the angle of your Craftmatic bed, or adjust the level or morphine in your drip. They can turn on televisions (when Great Show You Like is on), robots (benevolent), and wives (yours). They can turn off televisions (when Really Bad Show is on every channel), robots (malevolent, or at least mischievous), or wives (ugly). Of course, they can also cause trouble by, for instance, deploying atomic missiles or sending that flaming send-up of Teddy Roosevelt to your park ranger and Bull Moose father-in-law via email. Buttons can do all this and more, if you can believe it.
What buttons cannot do, however, is read minds or detect emotion or intent. People just refuse to believe this statement at the many ButtonCons I speak at worldwide, but I assure you of its validity and importance in the field of Button Relations. Case in point, a woman elects a Sunkist Orange beverage at a public vending machine by pressing the appropriate button. The Sunkist, as physically perfect as an Adonis, rolls forth from the machine. The woman is seething with anger. She vexed the machine and stormed off. She had wanted a Diet Pepsi, but had mistakenly pressed the wrong button. The fault arrow points to the woman, but she’d rather kick the defenseless machine. Ignorance claims one more innocent victim.
Buttons have no sense of time, no sense whatsoever of urgency. To illustrate, let’s role play. You play You. I’ll play the rest.
You stands beside an elevator bay, frantically pressing and depressing the button labeled “up”.
You: Damn you, elevator! I have a very important meeting!
Elevator Button reads a “Jughead Jones” comic and eats Nutter Butters. Elevator sleeps in the background.
Elevator Button: I won’t wake him unless she presses me six more times. It’s Six-More-Times-Day! Yay! Ooh, pudding…
Elevator Button eats the pudding while Elevator dreams of moving sideways and slantways. You becomes more irate and continues to press and depress Elevator Button.
Elevator Button: Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey Elevator! Wake up! Pudding! Elevator: (dreaming) Hrmph, East-south-east it is, sir. Grmble. Snert.
Elevator Button: (jumping on Elevator) Pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding! Elevator: Wha-? Oh, hey, little buddy. Urp, looks like we have a customer. Elevator opens his doors. You steps in. Elevator closes his doors. Elevator Button eats pudding.
Scene
The moral? Pudding is more effective than multiple pressings of the call button when summoning an elevator. Save your energy for pushing the Door Close button.
Which leads nicely to my next point: many buttons serve little to no actual purpose. They are placebo buttons, existing to make you (and You) happy. The Door Close button is one of these. This button does not close the door. The door closes on its own. Nor are you making the door close faster. Sorry. All you are doing is feeding your need to control things that do not need controlling. I believe this is a uniquely American elevator feature.
So before, when I told you to save your energy for the Door Close button, that was ruse, akin to the self-destruct button on your computer. It’s fake. Go on, press it. It’s ok, go ahead. It’s fake. A quirky novelty, whose purpose is to passively show your occupational frustration. Buttons: gateway to better interpersonal relations. Press it. Seriously. Press it. I know you want to. Go on.
How was I supposed you know you work in a missile silo?