Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Call Me Crazy

I work near the top of a 16 floor building. The elevators in this building have always been a little . . . erratic. This morning, I got into the elevator and pushed the button for my floor. The elevator went right up and made no stops and opened on my floor. As the doors were opening, I glanced at the electronic display that tells me which floor I am on. The display said 28.

I find it very disconcerting to be told I am getting off on the 28th floor of a 16 floor building. I know it's not true, I know I am really on my floor, but there is a part of me that feels like it is a really, really bad sign. I picture myself in the glass elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, popping up through the top of the building and flying around downtown Peoria with an old guy and a guy in a purple suit and top hat. Of course, I also pictured myself stepping out of the elevator in to a vast nothingness and falling to my death.

Of course, this is not the first time the elevator has done crazy things. It often says we are on level MM, which sometimes means mezzanine, but there is no mezzanine in my office building. I also got stuck in one of the elevators once. I called my secretary on my cell phone and said, "I'm stuck in the elevator!" She said, "Where?" "Where do you think? In our building! Call maintenance!" It was during my lunch hour and I had my lunch with me, so I sat on the floor and ate it. When the elevator company finally came to get me out, I had to crawl out onto the floor above where it stopped.

I try not to think about that when I get off on the 28th floor.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't like elevators, never have! Although when I was younger my brother and I used to play in the elevator at the Maller's building on Wabash, downtown Chicago. That was when the elevators didn't have doors, but cages and you could see each floor as you went up and down.

Mama T said...

Ughhhh....remind me never to visit you at work. Of course, If I ever need your kind of services, I would guess I was having a REALLY bad day. ;o) Anyway, I am horribly, horribly, horribly (wait, did I say horribly?) claustrophobic. I get antsy in an elevator that has to go up one floor, let alone 16. I would have to take a Xanax to go up that high.
LOL

I would complain about the crappy elevator...but that's just me, and I'm completely crazy.

:o)

Jennifer said...

Yes, that would freak me out, too, but the alternative (you know, getting a little exercise, walking up steps) would probably make me get over it....

(And thanks, now I can't stop picturing that Willy Wonka scene, it freaked me out so much as a kid, maybe more than the WofO flying monkeys!)

Anonymous said...

I think your elevator just has a sense of humor.

Tom