Elevator operator

An elevator operator (in British English, usually lift man, lift woman, or lift girl) is a person specifically employed to operate a manually operated elevator. Besides their training in operation and safety, department stores extended the rôles of operators as combination greeters and tour guides, announcing products, floor-by-floor, and occasional sales.

With the advent of user-operated elevators such as those utilizing push buttons to select the desired floor, few elevator operators remain. A few older buildings still maintain working manually operated elevators and thus elevator operators may be employed to run them. The Pioneer Building in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota and City Hall in Buffalo, New York are two of the few in the United States to employ elevator operators.

In more modern buildings, elevator operators are still occasionally encountered. For example, they are commonly seen in Japanese department stores such as Sogo and Mitsukoshi in Japan and Taiwan, as well as high speed elevators in skyscrapers, as seen in Taipei 101.