Panic Elevator

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 if you're in the entertainment industry and your name doesn't rhyme with Gleven Glielberg or Shmulia Doberts, you're going to have to do some seriously annoying, infuriatingly stupid work that you don't enjoy almost every day.  And I don't know, maybe Gleven and Shmulia do, too.  But it seems as if the wildly bothersome tasks have hit a peak around my office recently.  They alternate between banal and high stress, and are condescending so as to demonstrate zero faith in my abilities as often as they are way above my pay grade with full freedom to fail all alone.  In short, I'm not into it.

Enter this gem from some wonderfully prescient maintenance employee:

That's the elevator covered in padding.  I have to share an office with, as of today, four other people which makes throwing myself against the wall as I scream at full volume a slim possibility.  But an elevator- That I can commandeer.  That emergency Stop button can't just be for natural disasters and equipment malfunctions, and I know a young assistant who could sure use 10 minutes alone yelling at people who aren't there and whom she will never actually yell at and who might really enjoy punching a soft surface so that there's no later need to explain the scabbed knuckles.  I might even bring a book and a cup of coffee to wind down in there afterward, just to maximize the alone time.  And I'll probably pick my nose.  Just because I can.

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.

Opening Morning

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

Parking Level 3
A new play

The time: This morning
The place: An underground parking garage

A young woman is parking her car.  It's dirty, as though she hadn't washed it in months, took it on a camping trip recently, and then continued to neglect its appearance.  She thinks she is singing the right words to some late 70's rock song on the only radio station that comes through in the underground structure.  She is not*.  She finishes straightening her parking job.  It is still not straight.  She is bad at parking.  She turns off her engine.

A man approaches the parking attendant.  He has a close-cropped haircut and wears a long sleeved tee shirt with the same of some place or event written on it.  He is not wearing it ironically.  He hands the parking attendant his keys.

The woman spots the man.  They know each other, work on the same television show.  She waves, approaches, and then freezes in the middle of the aisle, panic-stricken.  Is there anything that she and this coworker can talk about as they wait for the elevator up to their offices?  What about in the elevator?  As they walk to long corridor toward their respective desks?  If she can think of one question to ask this man, or one interesting thing that she herself can share to fill the journey to the second floor with some life, then she can proceed.  Her mind is blank.  She is unprepared for this mission.  It cannot but fail.  She must retreat.

Slapping her palm to her forehead in a gesture that can only be read as, "Oh no!  How stupid!  I completely forgot that thing in my car!" she makes an about face and returns to her vehicle where she sits on the driver's seat and showily runs her hand over the passenger's side searching for that missing invisible thing that called for her return. 

The man leaves the valet stand.  She waits, hears the faint ding of the elevator, slowly regathers her things, and, with a sigh that releases the weight of the world, makes the long journey upstairs safely.  Alone.

The End

*Production Note:  "Ride Like the Wind" by Christopher Cross would be a fine choice for this song, as the woman only recently realized that the lyrics are probably not "And I've got such a long way to go/To make it to the corner of Mexico."  Border.  That would be border.  Not corner.

Wardrobe note:  The young woman is wearing a flannel shirt that she thinks is feminine enough because it has purple in it, but a coworker later greets her with, "Good morning, Paul Bunyan."

This Is No Aerosmith Song

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

The other night- after we had taped our show and I had worked for 12 hours- I got into the elevator to go to my car, but realized I didn't have my ID badge to scan.  Without it, the elevator wouldn't let me access the level my car was parked on.  There was another woman in the elevator.  She would not swipe her badge for me. This is my open letter to her:

Dear Lady in the Elevator,

You almost had me at first, when you pretended you couldn't hear me- me, the only other person in a small elevator with you- asking if you would please swipe your badge for me.  And for a second, after you cocked your head in surprise that I was talking to you- you, the only other person in a small elevator- I could have sworn you said that you didn't have a badge either, which is so weird since you were able to light up the button for another restricted floor.  But I think I got your point pretty clearly when you threw your arms in the air, ran furiously out of the elevator, and yelled that I had to go to the lobby for help.  Point taken.  You and your shoulder bag are really super rule-sticklers for elevator and parking level access in corporate America.  And why wouldn't you be?  I mean, if you loosened the reins on that then what next?  Passing out your PIN and copies of your Social Security card?  Leaving the window to your child's bedroom open at night and cutting your own phone lines?  A slippery slope indeed.

But ya know what, Lady in the Elevator?  I'm not mad.  I totally get where you're coming from, because after I waited for the elevator to go all the way down and then back up again (as I've mentioned, they really are shockingly slow) to take me into the lobby where I then had to walk to the security desk and bother a security guard as he slept in front of six blaring televisions, I got to thinking.  I got to thinking about all the treasures that you were protecting on Parking Level 3 by refusing to let me down there without my credentials.  There are cement columns I could have really thrown stuff at pretty hard; there are florescent lights that I could look at, or even break with my Starbucks travel mug if I were able to hurl it ten feet in the air; and there are up to several other vehicles- none of which I had the keys to- that I probably would have broken into just for ducks rather than getting into my own car which had Party in the USA cued up and ready for the drive home.  Just because that's what I'm into.  So I guess it just hurt to really be seen as I am, and that's really about me, Lady in the Elevator, not you.

Until we meet again and I hit Door Close but you make it in the elevator anyway and I pretend I didn't mean to/don't know who you are,
K