Ups and Downs

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I know that, given the frequency with which I talk about the elevators at my office, it must seem as though I used to live in some blissfully one-storied world where you could see the sun rise over the top of every building, and never had to say things like, "Excuse- What floor is that on?" because the answer, in that world, would always be, "One". But thanks today to my tardiness, selfishness, and unpreparedness, there is another elevator story to be told.

This morning I was running late because I'm someone who runs late (but just to work, never socially...figure that out).  As I was waiting impatiently for the elevator up from the parking dungeon, I saw a man approaching the nearby attendant to hand over his keys.  It was safe to assume, as there is no other way into the building, that this man's next stop would be the elevator.  But the elevator came, and he was still dropping off his keys.  And that was going to take up to maybe half a minute.  So I tried to hide in the corner of the elevator car, hit Door Close, and headed up by myself.

Ah but my employee badge wouldn't scan, which meant I couldn't light up the button for the floor I work on.  So the elevator went up for a moment, and then headed quickly back down.  To the parking level I had just been on.  And opened up to reveal the man I had abandoned there, the fallen soldier I had left to die alone on the P3 battlefield.  He recognized me, and went so far as to say curiously but secretly accusingly, "Oh.  I just saw you get on the elevator."

When I went to the security desk to have them help me fix my employee badge, the man at the desk looked it up and told me that it wasn't working because it had expired.  For one dreamy minute I thought that meant that I had been fired and could go home and eat pudding and take a nap.  Instead it just meant that I've been here for exactly six months and needed to be reauthorized.  You can only imagine the half-iversary party that my bosses threw me to celebrate, and how cleverly they disguised it as a regular day.  "Party on!  You're half a year into being here an entire year and disliking it roughly that same amount of time!" was probably too hard to fit on a banner.  Or it was sold out.