the british are coming and going

<-- this is becoming a habit...

where i stay in the summers, here in paris, gets invaded regularly by the english and their large groups of offspring.  now, i know that the children do not belong to the five or six supervisors since there are about 30 kids, but for the trip, they belong to the supervisors. 

i am about to offend all british people.  so if you are one, please pull out a pen and paper to take notes.

the children and the adults, and it is not just the children, but the adults as well.... fully grown british people.  i would also like to point out that this is not just one group.  this is about ten different groups i have witnessed... this summer.  i could do some math and add in the ones from the prior two summers as well, but that would be obscene.

back to the point: none of them know how an elevator (so that the brits will understand, the lift) works or functions.  they do not understand that the up button calls for an elevator to go, well, up.  or that the down button calls for an elevator to go... that's right, down.

there is a light that lights up and it is an arrow.  it points in the direction the elevator is going.  up for up.  down for down.  now.  all of this seems like common sense but apparently for the british, once they step in front of the lifts, they break out into a cold sweat and immediately start to panic.  and what do they do?  they push both the up and the down button.

now i know that they can't go to both places at once.  but this is what they do.  and when an elevator comes... they get on.  they don't check to see if it is going in their direction, no.  they just get on.  and then they push the button for the exact opposite direction.  the funniest part of the whole thing is, they seem frustrated that the elevator doesn't go in the direction they wanted.  "i told it to go to the basement, why is it going to the 8th floor?"

in all of this mass confusion, ultimately everyone pays the price.  the elevators stop working or are tied up with the british riding them up and down, not really sure when to get on or off.  thus causing mass amounts of frustration for the rest of the hotel population, including the spanish, the swiss, the germans, the americans, the italians, the argentenians and the french; all of which know how to use an elevator.

if anyone ever wants to bring the british empire down, if anyone ever wants to destroy great britain, if anyone ever wants to invade the islands, just install elevators in every building.