Elevator Stories
I would like to take a moment to rant about the elevators at work. For the first several years I worked in the building where I now find myself employed, I was on the first floor. I did not have to deal with the elevators with every move. Then, I was on the fourth floor. That is the top floor of the building. Right now, I'm on the third floor.
Because this is only a four floor building, the designers opted for hydraulic driven elevators instead of some cable driven mechanism. This has some advantages. The mechanism is smaller. The system is a bit more self contained. It has some drawbacks. The system is prone to mechanical trouble. At least, my personal opinion tells me so. The system is also slow. I would say it smells funny too. That may not be the actual elevator. I'm told the bathrooms vent into the shaft. Nice undocumented feature there guys.
The entire time I've been in this building, the elevators have been down one at a time at least half of the time. There have been one or two occasions where two of the four elevators was out of action at the same time. This is normally dealt with quickly. The elevators have been taken off line for extended periods for upgrades and maintenance. I'm still waiting for the day when all four go down simultaneously.
When I ride the elevator these days it feels like I'm traveling down a mine shaft. The car clunks and grinds. Every now and again there is a screech. Last year I got on the elevator on the first floor. It was early in the morning around 6:00 am. I hit three and waited. The door closed. Then, nothing. I hit the door open button and still nothing. Then I noticed the floor read out said "E" instead of a number at all. "Crap!" I thought. I experienced the "Oh shit" moment where you feel tingles and all the blood leaves your extremities. I'm claustrophobic. I started hitting buttons and hitting the "1" button seemed to open the door.
Not much later that day I found out someone got caught in the elevator and I shouted through to hit the "1" key to open the door. I heard they reset something to fix it after I complained. It seemed not to have learned its lesson.
There is no solution to this problem. It is not like the powers that be can just replace the elevators. I know the maintenance contractor has been here several times to adjust and repair the damn thing. I make sure my phone battery is charged before i ride. I honestly did not ride the elevator once when my mobile had a dead battery.
A friend of mine was caught in an elevator at University of Houston Down Town. He says the car was packed and got stuffy instantly. They were in contact with the fool on the other end of that on-board phone/intercom, but no one came to help them. They asked that the fire department be called and this person said they had called. After an hour and a half, someone on the elevator called 911 and the fire department showed up in ten minutes. The fire department said no one had called them. It turns out the person on the other end of that intercom had paged someone, and was waiting for their call back. Meanwhile, my buddy stood in a sweltering elevator with a dozen or so others who all remained calm. Fortunately, his professor was trapped with him. I suppose he could not deny the excuse.
I remember in psychology class discussing the fact that in western cultures we turn around to face the door on elevators. This does not happen in some other cultures. There were theories why this happens, but not concrete reasons.
Come now, if there has been a single post on this blog that should spawn a couple of anecdotes, it is this one. Please comment on your elevator stories.