Maybe they took their que from Apple. The Apple Store in Ginza Tokyo used to have a 3 floors and the elevator is just set to go 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. There are no buttons. It just goes, whether or not people need it. So if you just missed it it might be going up 2 floors and back down for no one. And of course it was slow and held the doors open 10 or 15 seconds per floor

Very form over function.