Elevators used to have operators inside that took residents to their floor
Elevators used to have operators until the mid-20th century. Up until around the 1950s, ordinary people could not be trusted with the complicated mechanisms of the elevators of the time. That was why hotels, big theatres, and luxury apartment complexes hired professionals to ride in them and operate them.
Elevator operators were responsible for manually closing and opening the doors, controlling the speed of the car, and telling those using the elevator what they could find on each floor. Nowadays, this job is completely obsolete because elevators are almost automatized; all we have to do is to press our own elevator buttons.