Staircases are not only for fire drills...comment by David Batzofin

A thorny question,posed recently on Face Book asked; " Why is it that people will go to gym, exercise,train,sweat and get fit...yet they will stand and wait for a lift rather than take the stairs"?
This was quickly followed by "People will often look for the closest parking to a Mall entrance, yet they will spend hours shopping or just browsing..."
and...
"Yes I did order a burger with fries...but I had a Diet soft drink"!
WTF people...do you really believe that drinking a diet soda is going to counteract all the fats that you are shoveling down your throat? Maybe, like Denmark and Romania it is time to institute a "fat tax" here in South Africa...

The questions got me reflecting on how lazy our society has become. The building I work in only has a single story, but there is an elevator. Why? Possibly for people to old, lazy or infirm to climb the 21 stairs from the ground floor.
Why is it then that I often find people from the businesses on the first floor patiently waiting for the elevator? And when it comes and they are transported the single floor what do they do...LIGHT UP A CIGARETTE!
I fail to understand that logic...not only are they unhealthy, but they insist on doing as little as possible to get themselves fit!
Personally I believe that employees in a building should be made to take the stairs and compensated with some sort of incentive for completing this task on a daily basis...the more flights of stairs that you climb, the more valuable the incentive...and I am talking proper monetary compensation and not a certificate at an awards evening...("and the award for the most stairs climbed goes to...the envelope please"?)
Come on bosses, fitter employees make better employees! The endorphins produced during exercise is a natural performance enhancing "drug" and should be encouraged...
But I digress...
Can anything be done to dissuade people from using an elevator?
A fire drill...crying wolf is not the object of the exercise
Name and shame...pictures of the guilty parties stuck on the office notice board? But what happens if they do not work in the building?
Cleaning staff...not those with trolleys of cleaning equipment, but those with just a cloth/ feather duster that waste time waiting for the elevator?
Referring to the original question, could the gym not make stairs part of the workout?
If they did that the participants would then have an excuse to use the elevator at the end of the session...
And what about the "close-to-the-door" parkers?
Invariably the parking bays closet to an entrance/exit are handicapped bays, which are abused more often than not by healthy shoppers who don't feel like looking for a parking space.
I have approached such people and inquired politely, why they are using handicapped bays...the answers have varied from " None of your f@&#ing business" to "Handicapped people do not use the bays at night"
I once found someone letting down all four tires of a car parked in such a bay.
The note they left on the windscreen read " Now you are handicapped"!