Storeys from the Otis

In which our Hero feels pressured by the people and the door

It’s not the last elevator from Saigon people… please don’t hold my elevator for your 15 friends coming one at a time and then deciding they don’t want to get on. Dick move!

Wait, I’ve done that rant.

“(BING!) Shleventieth floor. Going… Up!”

The elevator talks in a robot voice that was clearly constructed in pieces with no thought of how the whole fits together into a Frankenstein’s speech sample. Down is funnier because the elevator sounds like a depressed android “Going downnn.” But up is like when a baby plays peek-a-boo back but just flips their hands over their cheeks without covering their eyes. Cute, but hilarious.

“Going….”

In the elevator’s case, it’s that momentary pause that little bit of attempted tension as you wonder, what will the direction be? Will the elevator continue to the other floors that have been requested? Will the car fight the oppression of its gravitational nemesis? Will it defy my button-impressed command to rise two more storeys? Or will it break out sideways, confounding all expectations? Or maybe defy convention and linear space by stopping next in Ulan Bator? Where? Tell me, Elevator, I have to know. Where are we going?

“Up!”

Up, however, brings surprises, in the form of the annoying-as-shit employees who have been excused from their usual places enchained to their desk to bring us long-suffering fools the joy and wonder that is the annual charity drive kick off. Free food. Free coffee. Happy people.

People to whom it would be uncharitable to suggest they reproduce with themselves in more idiomatic terms. So I say, “Excuse me,” and “No thanks,” and scowl (politely), and go to my desk. Get my mug, slip down the stairs for some hot water and find another crowd of business people who don’t have time to attend the meetings I need them in, but do have time to stand around blocking the entrance way to the commissary. Please to be jamming spikes through your eyelids, spasebo.

I do not want the free stuff. I don’t want to join their charity drive. I resent the fact that the firewall between client and contractor is up for everything except for them to mooch so that their numbers look bigger and their tax benefit looks better. Bad attitude? I’m certain. But they’re not just charitable, they’re bullies and I have no patience for it.

I don’t want their coffee, or their free baked goods. But the commissary has a lemon danish for the first time in months so I buy one. And then have to get hassled for buying something because “we’ve got free stuff, you didn’t have to buy anything.” Actually, yeah, I did, thangyavurrymush. May your collective rectums prolapse while doing squats over vats of Tabasco.

The Rah rah rah is infuriating. I don’t want to wear jeans to work, I prefer the professional look even on Fridays. I certainly don’t want to pay for the privilege. I’m here to work, I am a professional for hire, and I’m only on your time as far as my contractual and professional obligations and other than that, dear client, I’d just as soon pretend I didn’t know you because I’m ashamed to be seen with you.

I am. I am. Oh god, I am. I am ashamed and I am tired and I’m just starting to reach inside and find the genius that would at least accept the misery and tear the sheep some new sheepholes. Where the hell have I been?

Lunch time was dandy.

The elevator closed fast on me while I was getting in, a metallic chomp that was disorienting in its unannounced sensation. My back was complaining from having slept awkwardly, and my forward motion meant that my shoulder torqued behind me, flexing me like a business card. My friends asked if I was okay and I told them I was, but I was lying. It strained me. By the end of the day I couldn’t hold my backpack in my right hand because of the load path across my back.

Things are better now, but I’m going to log a complaint just as soon as I figure out how. Would have done it today but I was in meetings after being squished.

“Going….”

To bed.