misunderstanding not lifted

In Singapore many of the lifts have that glass windows on the doors, perhaps to deter any possible mischief happening in the lift. The magic of those little windows is that you can see from outside, and also from inside.

This was what happened. We were inside the lift and the lift doors were closing. Then through the windows we could see this woman reaching right in front of the other side of the doors and desperately pressing the lift button. Most if not all kind people would try to press the door open button, but of course there are some who would similarly desperately try to press the door close button so as not to delay their lift journey. But, while I am not a lift maintenance engineer or designer, I suspect there must be some algorithm in place that tells the lift to proceed once the door has closed fully or something like that. We saw the woman outside the lift staring at us. She must have thought we pressed the door close button.

So transparency may not always be a good thing.