We consider the symmetric exclusion process {ηt,t>0} on {0,1}ℤd. We fix a pattern ${\mathcal{A}}:=\{\eta\dvtx \sum_{\Lambda}\eta(i)\ge k\}$ , where Λ is a finite subset of ℤd and k is an integer, and we consider the problem of establishing sharp estimates for τ, the hitting time of ${\mathcal{A}}$ . We present a novel argument based on monotonicity which helps in some cases to obtain sharp tail asymptotics for τ in a simple way. Also, we characterize the trajectories {ηs,s≤t} conditioned on {τ>t}.