Elevator Blues

I have poor luck with elevators. It is officially one of my life's little annoyances.

At work, our office building actually has a decent number of elevator units. As far as I know, sixteen for each tower. Half of which serves the low zone, the other half for the high. But for some reason, a few of them are often out of order. So the zones are bunched up and before we reach the 28th, we have traversed quite a number of other floors.

And there's another thing about them that bothers me. I think some of my fellow software developers have also commented about the weird algorithm that our elevators have. Or the lack thereof. You sometimes see three units at a time heading down simultaneously. And it's frustrating whenever a lot of people are waiting to head up. Especially if it's almost ten and Azeus people are rushing to beat the OTS. :)

I also spent a lot of time in the hospital last year. And Medical City has really atrocious elevator service. And they're also aware of it. They have signs on the lobby apologizing for their elevators' (in)capacity. In the sign, they also included well-worded encouragements to take the stairs because it's good for the heart and overall well-being. Right.

The first few times, I tried to wait. But patience is not a virtue I had the luxury of keeping because I always had to rush to get something or to be somewhere. In the long run, I took the stairs, even five flights of it, just to save time.

But the elevator here in our apartment building takes the cake. It is old and tiny. It looks like it was hijacked from one of the sad MRT stations. When you go up, you have to press down; and you have to press down when you're going up. The fan goes on only when you're about to get off. The floor buttons are almost falling off. The control panel cover is secured with masking tape which is almost always ripped - exposing the switches and knobs underneath, crudely taped with handwritten labels: "man. up", "man. down", "lights", "fan", etc.

To top it all off, it has a sickness. Our elevator is moody. It hates our floor on some days. And on some specific hours.

Our room is on the fifth floor. And the elevator's idea of "opening" on the fifth floor is abruptly stopping, giving a few moments of violent shakes, separating the doors three inches apart, and then - nothing else. When this happens to you for the first time, you begin to contemplate your mortality. You'll start to think whether you're doomed to spend the last minutes of your life in this heaven-forsaken, lousy excuse for technology.

The first time it happened, my roommate actually yelled my name very loudly through the three-inch gap. Unfortunately, no one could hear her from the hallway.

But now, we have an established workaround. After the elevator's "turbulence" in the attempt of opening on our floor, we hit the close doors button and then the 6th floor button. It closes and goes up to the next floor where its doors smoothly (yes, smoothly) opens. Then we take the stairs down one flight.

So now I find myself muttering when I take the elevator, "please open, please open, please open." Sometimes my muttering ends with a sigh of relief, sometimes with a low curse. I have a friend on the sixth floor and I think about dropping by at her place just to make the detour trip more worthwhile, whenever the elevator is in one of its mood.

Well, at the very least, I can console myself that I'll have a healthy heart. Nothing about a cheerful humor, though.