Striking midnight with 10 hostages and an Elevator God
TLDR; Instead of seeing fireworks to ring in 2017, I got trapped in a hot elevator with nine other people for an hour. The conversations were appropriately dark, reflective, and funny.
The New Year’s Eve dinner party was lovely. My coworker and her fiancé went above and beyond to prepare a beautiful and delicious sit-down dinner for us. Half of my new team was present and it was the first time I was meeting their plus-ones. We were originally apprehensive about the early 8pm start time, but with the flow of conversation, 8pm at the table became 11:45pm in a snap. The evening’s culmination was for us to ride up to the 56th floor and ring in the new year by observing Chicago’s Navy Pier fireworks from above. The best seat in the city.
With 15 minutes to spare, we collect our coats. I top off my dinner wine in case of a toast, but everyone else elects to leave their beverages behind. The eight of us take the elevator down to the lobby first, to switch elevators and access the upper floors. In high-rises, elevators are typically structured in this way — with specific elevators servicing specific sets of floors.
In the lobby, there are few people in a pseudo line, awaiting an available elevator of the three or four I see. An elevator to the left opens and the line flows into it. One of our hosts hops on to ride up ahead of us. A second door opens to the right. A couple is already in the elevator and the other eight of our pack, including me, file into the booth with the doors closing behind us.
We turn around to assume the standard elevator-riding positions and the car begins to move, right before halting. The elevator makes a feeble attempt to rise before dropping. Rise and drop. Rise and drop. Every few moments it makes the same motion and the accompanying sound is similar to the sound a cheap washing machine makes when it’s early in the cycle, interrupting the water filling noise with the occasional g-gunk-ka churn. We boarded at the ground floor, so logic says we went up, but it actually feels like we went down. The digital floor display reads “X” instead of a floor number.
We immediately ponder the situation, wondering about user error. Are we over the weight limit? Aren’t those limits usually obscenely high?
We waffle on what our next step is in this situation, but end up pushing the help button.
The elevator is barely large enough to fit the ten of us. I’m positioned on the back wall, with the unfamiliar couple to my right. The man in the corner and the gal to my side. A band of four of my crowd are through the middle with our host at the control panel and my boss with his wife at the door. They’re now facing us to participate in conversation. One of the top corners has a security camera in the black bubble. The rest of the ceiling is paneled with lights but appears to be missing that center hatch they show in all of the action movies — you know, the one where people climb out of the box to fight among sparks, writhing cables, and zipping walls. Like the viral “this is fine” comic, I’m standing with a wine glass in my hand, sipping Malbec as if all is right in the world. The gal to my right has a green Solo cup with a mixed drink.
The help button rings with a clangy buzz. It takes a moment but an ambient voice responds. “This. Is. The. Front. Desk.” He inquires as to why we rang. His mechanical introduction and oddly punctuated pauses between words is comedic, as if he’s the yard loudspeaker announcer for movie night in The Postman. We let him know we’re stuck in the elevator and that it keeps bouncing. He tells us this happened earlier in the day and offers to call the elevator company to send a mechanic. That doesn’t sound particularly helpful, but we don’t have much of a choice aside from compliance. He asks us to wave to the camera to let him know which car we are before closing the communication line. Unsure of how long this will last, we all instinctively check our phones to find we’re in a faraday box. No reception. Despite this, we’ll continue to check our phones periodically, kind of like a yawn. One person will check, then everyone else will see them check and also check. Tyler gives us an informal countdown to 2017 and we verbally cheers, with deflated enthusiasm.
At this point, the elevator is already getting hot. We had our coats on in preparation for being outside. The walls of the cage are brushed chrome with a ridged wave pattern. On reflection, it looks like the inside of a microwave. One at a time, we begin to shed our layers and unbutton shirts. Coats flow around our feet and I can see sweat gathering on foreheads only a few minutes in. We’d uncomfortably squeezed into this toaster for a one-minute ride that now has an unknown duration.
Repeated calls to the ambient toaster God each got the same response; “This. Is. The. Front. Desk.”
No shit. Who else would be calling us?
Our ten bodies are pressed together and the elevator continues to lurch up and down, enough that I begin imagining people getting seasick. Our feet aren’t tired yet, but I’m surveying the floor and imagining the situation where we need to begin taking turns sitting, because we couldn’t all sit together. I joke that if I finish my wine, there’s room for one person to pee in the glass. Fortunately, nobody is nauseous or having a bio emergency at the moment.
Our host continues to ring the front desk God to inquire about our status. First the mechanic has been called but the front desk is awaiting them to call back. Next, they are on their way and estimate 20 minutes. Then, they are stuck in holiday traffic and will be at least another hour. On the third or fourth call, God tells us they are going to call 911 instead. That seems excessive on the surface but is a relief. By now we’ve already been trapped for at least half an hour.
Throughout this ordeal our conversation kept us afloat.
The man in the corner who was unaffiliated with our party is trying to not have a panic attack. His head is down, eyes closed, and he is being quiet. He tells us he’s trying to “keep it together.” I’m continuing to sip my wine and the crowd laughs at the visual. The gal with the mixed drink offers a sip to a couple people. She asks us if we all know each other, perceiving they are the outsiders. We let her know we work together, prompting the logical follow-up question about what we do. Rather than belaboring the description of a UX designer, we collectively answer that we design software to prevent situations like this from happening. We identify the need for an elevator to have a button that stops it from repeatedly bouncing up and down when in distress. That answer is enough for her and the conversations turn to other topics.
I commented on our domino arrangement, citing a behavioral study of elevators I’d read, showing that our personal space’s radius is a factor of context. In an empty elevator, when the first person steps in they stand anywhere. When a second person enters, the first shifts to one side and the second becomes a mirror. A third stands near the door and forms a triangle while the original two push backward. This reshuffling of positions is a subliminal social norm we typically don’t process. Eventually, the elevator is full and our bodies can even be touching. However, if the second person had gotten onto the elevator and stood next to the first person, or had they not turned to face the door and instead turned to face person one or the rear wall of the elevator, person one would have been alarmed and uncomfortable.
“The goal, of course, is to maintain (but not too conspicuously) maximum distance and to counteract unwanted intimacies — a code familiar (to half the population) from the urinal bank and (to them and all the rest) from the subway. One should face front. Look up, down, or, if you must, straight ahead.”
— excerpt from Up and Then Down (2008), The New Yorker
Our topics took dark, jovial turns.
At one point, my boss opened the elevator door to see where we were, only to find a metal wall. Someone suggested that had we been near a floor, one of us could have crawled out, but I advised against that because of the recent New York City incident where a woman was killed stepping into an elevator that moved while the door was open. We collectively inspected the ceiling and talked about the missing escape hatch. Someone pointed out the piece of duct tape in the corner and wondered what it was holding up, or if any attempt to remove it would be called out by God. “Don’t touch the duct tape.” Someone pointed out the loose screws in the wall, as if that could somehow be tied to our predicament. My boss noted the door is nice and cool if anyone overheats and needs respite.
Interrupting our conversation, we hear the buzz of the help button. We didn’t ring it though. We hear it a few more times and we buzz God ourselves. He informs us the fire department is on its way and that another elevator is also stuck. The buzzing we hear is them, preventing us from ignoring the situation. By this time God only dials us. He ignores our buzzing when we ring him. Every so often we buzz him anyway, just for stress relief, while we imitate his greeting and pontificate the type of personality he has. We fantasize about the fire department rescuing us. One person admits they’ve never been rescued by the fire department before, as if that’s an experience everyone has. We joke they should ask the fireman to carry them. Someone points out it could be a firewoman and I offer that if she looks strong, maybe I’ll ask her to carry me. it’s a good thing we’re all comedians — except for the guy in the corner.
At some point the floor numbers had started going up as if we were moving, even though it didn’t feel like progress. We’d notify God of whatever floor number we were supposedly on each time he called us. We tried pushing all of the floors above the floor we were on to see if the doors would happily open somewhere — anywhere. The lights flickered out for a moment and we talked about how dandy that would be, if suddenly we were also in the dark, listening to each other breathe through the hot, recycled air.
The power flickered again and the elevator panel wiped. All of the buttons became unlit. We tried pushing some buttons and they did nothing, then the elevator began to move. The floor count seemed confused though: 29, 26, 27, 24. Our anticipation of something happening is visible.
The doors open.
We’ve made it to the lobby and gleefully look out at the crowd of people now formed, awaiting to get into the elevator. As we begin to spill out, the cool-in-contrast lobby air floods in refreshingly. I pause before departure, looking toward the stranger in the corner who is collecting himself. We stand looking at each other for a moment and he lifts his arms. I give him the farewell hug he is requesting and we exit together, smiling. We advise the lobby patrons to not board that elevator but they do anyway.
It’s 1am. We’ve missed our fireworks, but the night was far more memorable. At this point we still need to take the other elevator back to the apartment. We head up to open our overdue champagne and to clink glasses in a proper toast not only for the new year, but to having survived being trapped in the elevator without any significant incident. My new team and I have shared an experience we’ll likely recount for years.
