In the middle or end of the day, yes. In the morning, waiting on the bottom floor is the best.

Unless you're a hotel. Then the timing is flipped: Wait in a distributed manner in the morning/mid-day, gather on the floor in the evening.

The problem is that in the morning the “last stop” for the elevator might be the lobby not a mid floor. And so it would have to move itself back up without any passengers or calls to upper floors. Basically “optimistically” moving itself back up. And I wonder if some (most?) control systems don’t do that because of… well I dunno. Lots of elevators have pretty old or basic control systems in them. Maybe predate caring about energy and many also probably aren’t strictly smart enough to be concerned about wear factors and stuff.

It could also be that you and I simply aren’t privy to what is actually happening “the instant” you are waiting for the elevator.

…which makes me wonder how often the firmware in these get updated. Assuming it’s not just a pile of ancient relays and stuff. And if, when they do get updated, the algorithms get improved. Or if the algorithm is something that gets sold to the building and “upgrading” is an actual purchase.

Anyway, I could get a little LLM buddy to look it all up but where is the fun in that?