After leaving a lecture by an architect on the 12th floor of a building downtown, I’m waiting for the elevator along with several other attendees. We stand in silence as the car makes its interminable approach, each focused on his/her phone, or else busy making a cursory inspection of the design studios that surround the elevator bank. When the car arrives and the doors slide open I’m seized with a momentary panic: how will we all cram into this tiny space and continue in our careful avoidance of social interaction, complicated by the fact that we’ve all just attended the same lecture? But as we file into the car I sense that the prevailing rules of elevator decorum will prevail in the end – rules which are, I realize, inversely proportional in their effect to the size of the elevator car. But then, at the last moment as the doors are closing, two young women squeeze in, all giggles and apologies. We cram closer together, shifting to accommodate them. As the doors slide closed, one of them pipes up: ‘So, what did everyone think of that lecture?’ A beat of silence is followed by a round of vaguely laudatory comments. ‘Yes indeed…’ ‘Great…’ ‘Uh huh…’ I shrink further into myself, counting the seconds until the car reaches its destination and we are released from this torture chamber of unwelcome conviviality.