Scary: Elevator Situation

In celebration of Admin Week, or Secretary's Day, or whatever have you, my office sponsored one of it's semi-mandatory revelry events, this time a "Wine and Food Pairing" from 3:30 to 5:00 PM. A representative from the wine store in our building moderated our revelry, describing six lovely non-potable wines, ranging in flavor from seltzer to cough syrup, and taught us to swirl and sniff at our glasses as we were shepherded from station to station and made to eat single serving snacks out of those little plastic cups they fill with mouthwash at the dentist's office. He told us that we were all eligible for a ten percent discount at his wine store.

Anyway, after the party, we all had to stay late in order to do the work we could have been doing between 3:30 and 5:00. I had snuck out at 4:30 with a sudden raging head and stomachache, and by 5:30 I had done as much work as possible in my condition. I got into the elevator with L., and she asked me subway directions to Columbus Circle. Then there was a sound like a car crash over our heads—metal breaking against metal, crunching, banging—it was very loud and very close and L. started screaming and pressing buttons. Then the elevator stopped moving and the alarm was ringing. I pressed the Emergency Call for Help button until a voice came over the speaker and asked what happened. We told him about the crash-boom-bang and he told us that the Fire Warden would begin working on our situation. I had a raging head and stomachache.

We weren't stuck too long—five or ten minutes—but after we started moving again and got back to the lobby, the doors opened, and all of these little black bits of plastic and metal and wire rained out of the shaft. There wasn't anyone there in the lobby waiting for us. The elevator doors stood open. We told the security guards at the end of the elevator bank to do something—guard the elevator, put up a sign, anything to ensure that no one would use the elevator again until it had been fixed—but they just nodded their heads and said yes, the Fire Warden knows it's broken. We continued to insist that they do something—people were coming in and out of the bank all this while, and they just stood there, nodding like fools and doing nothing.