The elevator. A strange and useful contraption, but not without quirks.

Have you ever noticed that elevator-makers are acutely aware of your urgent desire to know how soon an elevator will reach the first floor - there's an indicator for every car showing its current location and direction of travel as you stand in front of the bank - but are entirely oblivious of the desire of those on, say, the ninth floor, to know when a car will arrive to whisk them earthwards? (Or even further skywards.)

When you're standing on the ninth or twelfth floor, you have no way of knowing when or if an elevator will ever arrive to transport you elsewhere.

This is fine for those of us such as myself who wouldn't dream of riding an elevator down for any distance of less than 20 or so floors, but there are those people for whom a flight of stairs, up or down, is impossible. I think the people on the seventh floor, waiting patiently in their wheelchairs, are entitled to know if an elevator is coming to answer their call. They're entitled to know if some inconsiderate slob is standing there on the third floor, holding the door pen as he flirts with a saleswoman leaving his office. They're entitled to know if one of the two elevators in the building is stuck on the fourth floor and hasn't moved for hours.

Of course, I also think those healthy, able-bodied workers on the first floor shouldn't be riding the elevator up to the second to use the bathroom, but that's just me.

I also think that users of the basement level of this building, situated as it is below the parking garage, are entitled to elevated transport out of the dungeon. When you consider they'd actually have to climb four floors to reach to reach an exit door that leads to some other location inside the building, it's even more important. When you consider that the only public conference rooms in the building are in the dungeon, not-infrequently leaving armloads of physically disabled people queued up and waiting for transport, it becomes An Issue.

I'm not a big elevator fan.

I don'tdislike them, it's just that, given the choice, I'd rather ride an escalator. I like to swoop majestically through space, looking down in serene superiority upon those ant-like toilers working their stubby little legs to move from store to store.

It's Friday. Typically, Bernie would be home spreading chaos via phone, e-mail, and IM. Today, for some weird reason, he chose to come into the office. If he starts with me, he's visiting the nearest elevator shaft.

(kidding)

I was going to tell you the story of the man riding the elevator with me today who wanted to push all the buttons for all the floors so we could stop on each one and see if anyone had better carpet in the common area than our floors had, but I'm out of time.

I have the oddest conversations with strangers.

(I was also going to tell you about all the job opportunities the R.C. has been sending me from CraigsList. If half those are true, it seems I could make at least a subsistence living blogging part-time for various groups.

I particularly liked the one who was looking for someone to blog about celebrities. I think I could achieve a sort of snarky-worshipful tightrope writing style that could have been rather popular with the feeble-minded sorts who'd actually read a blog devoted to celebrity-watching.

It's a pity I have a job. I have so many other interesting things I could talk about. Perhaps I will blog my job-hunt when it begins?)