Elevator

For several minutes yesterday, I thought I would be spending the evening in a USX elevator. Several minutes may not sound like a long time, but when you're locked inside a 4x4x8 metal box, the minutes certainly feel longer.

I and another person from my floor got on the elevator after work, and, as usual, the elevator started its quitting-time-stop-on-every-floor descent. At the next floor down, it slowed, but didn’t quite stop. It continued to move down at an almost imperceptibly slow pace for about 20 seconds, until it finally stopped, and the doors opened. Whew, that was weird … dodged a bullet there, I thought.

A few more people got on, and we started again for the next floor down, where it happened again. Slow … 20 seconds later, stop. At this point I was just waiting for the lights to go off or for sirens to sound—some signal of the impending elevator break down, or the thing somehow locking in place for a few hours.

My guess is that things like this happen more often than you might think, as I’ve seen some other bizarre elevator quirks at USX. I’ve gotten on elevators whose doors would never close, and thus would never go anywhere. There are regularly elevators in the lobby that beep incessantly, doors open, “ooh, ooh, pick me! pick me!” The Venus Flytrap of elevators?

Anyway, it happened at two more floors, but thankfully each time the elevator did its thing, albeit very slowly, and we all eventually made it to the ground floor.