Elevator operator

[1] While largely considered an obsolete occupation, elevator operators continue to work in historic installations and fill modern-day niches.

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, and at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

[4] The attendants at the five stations are primarily maintenance and cleaning workers who suffered injuries that made it hard for them to continue doing their original jobs.

[8] In October 2018, the MTA again proposed removing the elevator operators at the five stations, but this decision was reversed after dissent from the Transport Workers' Union.

[9] As of 2022, elevator operators are currently employed in Market Street stations of the San Francisco Bay Area's Bay Area Rapid Transit rapid transit system to provide for passenger safety and elevator cleanliness amidst regional problems with homelessness and substance dependence.

However, erebeta girl remains the popular term for this occupation, a staple sight of urban Japan.

Sporting tailored uniforms and robotic smiles, elevator girls are trained extensively in polite speaking and posture.

In 1929, the Ueno Branch of Matsuzakaya department store hired women to operate the elevators in its new facilities.

Although women in the United States had performed the same duty previously, in Japan the shift to female elevator operators was remarkable.

[13] Karl Greenfeld's 1995 expose of Japanese culture Speed Tribes: Days and Nights with Japan's Next Generation, featured a fictional story of an elevator girl who works the elevator by day and engages in drugs and risky sex by night.