You know those fancy elevators where you type your destination on a keypad, and then it groups riders into specific cars for maximum efficiency? They are increasingly used to segregate the unwashed masses from their corporate bosses, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Elevators now route employees, sometimes according to rank. They can help corporations keep track of who is in the office and who isn't. They can be programmed so that a germophobe can simply wave an ID card in front of a reader and be shuttled to the proper floor without actually touching a button. They can redirect an unsuspecting employee to a different floor at the request of the boss.

Coincidentally, The Wall Street Journal's office is in Manhattan's News Corp. building, home to a complicated set of keypad-operated elevators. And those don't even count service elevators, loading dock elevators, and all other forms of elevator segregation! I have a dream, that one day this nation will rise up, in a single elevator of freedom and justice.

Quick, someone cut the cables on Rupert Murdoch's secret diamond-encrusted elevator car! The Great News Corp. Elevator Rebellion has begun. [WSJ, photo via Shutterstock]