Stuck

My day did not begin well, and I should have taken that as a sign of disaster to come (see below). After a completely uneventful morning and commute in to the office in NYC, navigating unknown subway systems yet making good time, I ran to catch the up elevator. I made it, and I didn't see any indication from my soon-to-be new bestest friends that I had been a jerk about the whole thing, so I was feeling like I had cheated fate a bit — the elevators at 50 Broadway can be kind of slow.

But no, my hubris caught up with me. About 15 seconds into the ride, the elevator jerked to a stop and all our various floor selections blinked out. We dutifully pressed the buttons again and starting moving, this time to jerk to a stop after only another 5 seconds or so. This time we hit the alarm button, and should have been suspicious when the front desk lady immediately asked, "Are you stuck in the elevator?"

(Note to buildings with elevators: If the passenger has to do something unintuitive, like hit a second, unhelpfully labeled button (Signal?) to talk into the speaker, then you should either post instructions inside the elevator or train the staff to explain the system the first time she talks to trapped riders, and not say something like (I'm not making this up) "Hello? Hello?!? Hey, does anyone speak English in there?!?!"

After several purposefully vague "Someone's on the way" calls from the front desk, we were finally rescued after 45 minutes of captivity. Fortunately, nobody freaked and nobody had to really go the bathroom, so we avoided the worst "Lord of the Flies" scenarios. A few jokes were had at the intercom lady's expense, but I was worried for a while — only one of us had cellphone signal, and that could have gotten ugly fast.

The bravest thing I did all day was get back into an elevator to go up to the office on the 28th floor before going to the bathroom. Where's my medal?