The hospital is huge. It was my first time there, quite a feat given the number of years I have lived in Lincolnshire. It all seemed quite modern and organised.
However, what did strike me as very odd was the lifts and the extraordinary arrangement in place for calling a lift for a designated floor.
Instead of the traditional method of pressing an up or down button, you have to enter your required floor number on a panel. The panel then tells you which of the four lifts you should go and wait at. This actually resulted in huge queues whilst people waited for a lift for their designated floor. It should be noted that the lift will only stop at the floor requested and no other, as I found out when entering the first available lift.
Once inside the lift, there is no way of selecting the floor you need as it has been pre-programmed to stop at a specific floor from the panel in the foyer. As I had simply entered the lift assuming it would operate in the established fashion, I had to exit again to enter my floor selection and await my designated lift.
How utterly ridiculous! Surely this wins the award for the most pointless and complicated procedure? If I had difficulty understanding how it worked then anyone of elder years stands absolutely no chance. The numbers of people who have travelled up and down only to see the floor they want shoot past, must be in the hundreds if not thousands.
Why make something that should be simple and straightforward to use so unnecessarily complicated? Who's brilliant idea was this and has it won them a bonus or hospital management award? Just exactly what was the rationale for making the process of using a lift so difficult? We'll probably never know, but the lifts at Boston's Pilgrim Hospital most certainly win my 'Most Stupid Idea of the Year' Award.
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