OPINION: See ya' later travelator

"What part of ‘keep to the left’ eludes shoppers as soon as they set foot on a moving surface?" Max Crus investigates this 'escalating' problem among shoppers.

ZOOMING up the travelator at the local concrete supermarket complex the other day, deftly dodging those standing to the left, those standing to the right and even some standing in the middle, suddenly my progress was brought to a screeching halt by a plug of humanity inching its way to soporific commercial oblivion.

About to say rather more loudly than is polite "excuse me", a woman beside me, cognisant of my 'charge of the righteous brigade', calmly suggested "why not stop and smell the roses?".

"Since when does McDonald's smell like roses", I retorted sharply as we crawled toward the food court, or I would have done if I'd thought of it quickly enough.

Lucky I didn't because just then the cause of the conveyor's constipation was revealed as a wheelchair.

Phew! But that didn't change my attitude.

What's wrong with these people? The disabled excepted. What is it about travelators that makes people think "gosh, I've come all the way from the carpark, I need a little rest before hiking on to base camp (possibly the health food shop on level one)".

Why are these people invariably, overwhelmingly, overweight?

What part of 'keeping to the left' (or the right for European expats and National Party voters) eludes shoppers as soon as they set foot on a moving surface?

Does piped music lull people into a false sense of time as well as wealth?

Some days it feels you are transported to some bizarre Michael Escher sketch from which there is no extrication except over the edge.

And what's with the built in brakes on trolleys? Like the mountain tracks in World's Most Dangerous Roads, there's no room to pass so you're forced to stand there while your blood boils. What else can you do?

Boil an egg possibly.

However, there is a fantastically simple solution to ambulator angst that will not only reduce rage but make people a lot fitter too…make them go the other way.

Enforce a rule that you have to go up the downtravelator and down the up one. Simple.

While I'm at it, what's the go with those stupid liquor-store trolleys that you bang your shins on?

Is that a Pavlovian ploy to reduce our consumption?

Well, it didn't work.

Originally published as OPINION: See ya' later travelator