10:11 PM

Stuck in an elevator

Today, for the first time in my life, I got stuck in an elevator. I was stuck in my building elevator for 40-45 minutes at the P4 level. The crappy part about that was that my cell phone wouldn't work. So, pressed the 'Call for Help' button. I cannot tell you the number of times I got hung up on. So, I kept pressing it until someone finally answered and told me to just hang on. Like I could even do anything else. In the meantime, I can hear the building fire alarm start to go off, and figure 'Just great. If this was a real fire, I'd be stuck in here.' So, I press the call button again to see if someone can at least update me on what's going on. I get nowhere - another hangup. I sit and listen to some music. Then I can hear that the fire alarm has stopped, so I figure that the elevator should be okay soon. Wrong. I wait...and wait...and the elevator buzzer is still going despite the building alarm being off. So, I press the call button again. The ultra helpful person there tells me that the other 2 elevators are fine, but elevator 1 doesn't seem to be working. And I'm yelling at this point that "Of course it's not working!! I've been inside elevator 1 for the past 20 minutes!" So uber helpful person tells me to hang on, at which point I get hung up on. Again. I let another 10 minutes go by before I hit the call button again cuz no one even told me if someone was coming or not. At this point, a different voice comes on, so I yell into the panel that I'm still stuck in elevator 1, and could someone please let me know what's going on. This person, who in retrospect was probably part of the fire department, told me to try and stay calm, and that they were sending people down. Three songs on my iPod later, I hear someone on the other side yelling "Hello!", so I yell back. Five minutes later, the door is pried open, and I'm greeted by the sight of 3 firefighters. They asked me how long I'd been there, and were pretty surprised to hear that it'd been that long. They apologized, though it wasn't their fault, and asked me if I was okay. I was fine, but mostly a bit pissed that no one let me know what was happening. After I got to ground level, I called Jamie and we've decided that we're going to report this incident. There were a lot of things that weren't handled properly.

Man...I'm glad this week is over...