For decades I’ve walked to the corner of our campus to a busy street and pressed the pedestrian crossing button to go across the street to the shopping center. This has become much more frequent since the Starbucks moved into the shop on the corner, and the guys have to have their caffeine fix (I don’t drink coffee). I often stand at the corner and watch other people come up and press the button, and press the button, and press the button, and press the button, trying to satisfy some extremely strong urge to gratify themselves. I’m not sure what kind of gratification they’re getting, but it often seems just like those lab rats that constantly press the button to get another dose of a drug. I call these people Button Pumpers. They must think that pushing the button more will speed up the stop lights.
Now that the construction has finished at and around the corner, and after the contractors cut through the fiber optic cable that feeds data to our $212 thousand dollar digital marquee – not once but twice – the city has upgraded the pedestrian buttons to comply with the disability laws. So every time one presses the button, he hears a loud ‘WAIT!’
Our department is less than a hundred yards from the corner, and from that far away when I’m outside I can clearly hear the button pumpers:
WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT!
WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT!
WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT!
WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! ………