Subjects Who Take the Stairs Once Feel Entitled to the Elevator for the Rest of the Week

The Malarkey Institute’s Bureau of Moral Accounting exists to study the private ledger every person keeps of their own small virtues. Its newest finding concerns the stairwell: a single voluntary flight, the Bureau reports, purchases an average of six days of entirely guilt-free elevator use.

The Bureau has elected to publish as a set of frequently asked questions, on the grounds that everyone reading it already has one.

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Frequently Asked Questions (Compiled By The Bureau, About Itself)

How long does one flight actually buy? Six days, mean. The Bureau observed a range of four to eleven, with the upper end reported almost exclusively by subjects who had taken the stairs while someone was watching.

Does it matter how many flights? Remarkably, no. One flight and four flights purchased indistinguishable credit. The ledger appears to record the decision, not the distance — an accounting practice the Bureau concedes “would end most firms.”

Does the credit expire? It does not expire so much as get quietly renewed. Eighty-one percent of subjects, asked on day seven whether they had taken the stairs “recently,” said yes. They had not. They were thinking of the same flight.

“One subject cited a stairwell ascent from March,” reported Dr. Fenwick Malarkey. “It was August. He was still drawing on it. When we showed him the date he said, ‘that sounds about right,’ and pressed the call button. We did not stop him. We had no grounds, and frankly no standing.”

Can the credit be transferred? Only rhetorically, and only at dinner parties.

Is this specific to stairs? No. The Bureau has identified the same ledger behind the salad ordered at lunch, the one walk taken on a Sunday, and the gym membership purchased in January and honoured in January.

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By The Numbers

Who This Affects

• Anyone with a January gym membership, whose ledger the Bureau has already audited in principle.
• Building managers, who commissioned two stairwells and are servicing one elevator.
• The subject from March, whose credit the Bureau now regards as the longest on record.
• The Bureau’s own staff, who occupy the second floor and have not been observed using the stairs once.

This follows the Institute’s standing interest in the gap between what a body has done and what its owner believes it has done — see also our work on defiant rest.

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A Word of Caution

We are not suggesting you take the stairs more, take them less, or audit yourself in any way. The Bureau holds no position on your health and would be unqualified to hold one. We are simply noting that the ledger exists, that everyone keeps it, and that not one of them has ever been reconciled.

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Satire disclaimer: This article is a work of parody. None of it is true. The Bureau of Moral Accounting does not exist, no stairwells were observed, and nobody measured anyone’s guilt-free elevator credit. If you can take the stairs comfortably, they are good for you — take them.