The elevator incident

SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2006 05:35 PM, CDT
So, I said i'd be sharing stories of our adventure and here's one that I am remembering today.

The Elevator incident.

When we first got to the U of MN we noticed that the elevators tended to be a little quirky. Sometimes they wouldn't recognize that the door was shut and you'd have to jump to get it to shut enough and go (yeah, and what'd they do with that 4 million donation from the Vikings?) And Craig and I joked that one day, one of us was going to get stuck in one. My biggest fear.

Fast forward about 4 weeks. Craig was at home working for the weekend. Tyler's mom and I decided to go up to the 8th floor (yes, that hospital is backwards, the cafeteria is on the top instead of the basement) and have some dinner. We have our 'is this really meat?' cheeseburgers and headed back down to the 5th floor.

The elevator stopped on the 6th floor to allow more passengers on. An elderly woman, her daughter who had previousely had a stroke and was in a wheelchair, and 2 other seemingly fairly healthy daughters. Along with another woman who was traveling alone. While they were getting on the door was goofy and was trying to shut on them. Wierd

So they get in, the door is finally allowed to close and..........nothing happens. All the buttons go dim, and instead of the little LED thing saying what floor we were on it instead said ---.

We all sat there for a minute just waiting and processing what was happening. After pushing all of the buttons and nothing happening to our dear dead elevator we called for help.

The nice security guard comes and from outside the door we hear him say in very broken english something about resetting the system. A few minutes later we feel ourselves move, we thought we were going up (except for the lady in the corner who insisted we were falling to our death), but the doors didn't open.

The broken english security man said he was going to call maintenence. He told us to back up as he was going to try to shove something in the door to 'get us some air' (as if elevators are air tight or something). Then inquired as to if we would like him to try to get us some magazines. About this point is where I succumbed to the unrestrainable urge to laugh hysterically and yelled that the magazines wouldn't be necessary, but a margarita would be quite nice.

A few minutes later the maintenence gentleman comes and tells us he is going to reset the system (didn't we already try that?) Nothing happens.

By this time we had been in our close quarters for approximately 30 minutes. They informed us that thier meneuvers hadn't worked (oh, really?) and they were calling the elevator company. A few minutes latery they informed us that they man from the elevator company would be there in 20 minutes, as he was coming from across town.

I offered my phone to the other unfortunate souls in the elevator so they could call anyone they needed to call. (my phone worked so nicely in MPLS, sigh) and when they were finished I called Craig at work.

Me: You'll never guess where I am
Craig: Jail? (WHAT?!?!)
ME: errrr. no. stuck in the elevator at the hospital
Craig: LMAO

Well, not exactly the response I was after. So I call Alex's nurse and tell her where I am, she too found it rather amusing but was kind enough to inquire as to whether or not I was ok.

I'm still trying to repress my laughter, thinking 'yep, THIS is my life!' When the elderly woman sits down on the floor, begins hyperventilating and promptly insists that we were all going to die, she had it all figured out. We were going to crash to our deaths'

The rest of us are trying to calm her down, lest the poor soul go into cardiac arrest on us. She did regain her composure after a few minutes and everyone in the elevator breathed a sigh of relief that we were not, in fact, going to have to preform life saving measures in the elevator.

A bit later we heard someone from outside tell us to stand back. It was like something in a movie and I pictured they were going to try to blow the door up with dynamite or something, they were quite dramatic.

Then this big buy prys the doors open in some heroic effort akin to a superman move. We all stepped out and strange lady in the corner proceeded to hug everyone, apparently going through such a 'traumatic' experience showed her the love.

Someone from the hospital took our names and addresses. I guess to prepare thier legal defense if any of us decided we were going to sue for pain and suffering or something and gave us all $4.50 meal vouchers for the cafeteria. Apparently we HAD actually gone up when we thought, because we were now back on the 8th floor.

A few of the folks then refused to enter another elevator and took the stairs down. Myself, thinking that 8 floors down was a bit ambitious (was going down to smoke) decided to get in another elevator. The nice security fellow demanded he ride with me, apparently he was afraid I'd break another elevator.