Grumpy Bunny wrote something that reminded me of the horror that is the elevator. Any time a half dozen people are squished into a slowly moving closet, you have the opportunity for offense and embarrassment.
Even with your eyes glued resolutely ahead and your body pressed against the wall, you cannot get far enough from your fellow human beings for comfort.
The people on the elevator include:
The marinators (see perfume below)
The awkward amount of stuff people
The bringing the children to work people (pushing the button for each floor
The lazy people (getting on the elevator to go up one floor)
The partiers (whose breath alone has an alcohol contest. If it were possible to get a contact high from booze, this is where it would happen.
Halitosis Harbingers
The Smokers (not all smokers, just those who smell like they smoked three packs while sitting in a box.)
The Ghosts, that is the um...'spirit' of riders past. Case in point:
One day I pressed the elevator button and when the doors opened up I almost gasped out loud. Someone had suffered a major gas attack on the elevator and the miasma wasn't going anywhere quick. Having lived with 'Jan' and the one-woman 'Navy', I could have borne the stench, but what I couldn't stand was the thought that if the elevator stopped on a populated floor, someone might think the stench had come out of ME. I would get 'the look' and be branded as an elevator polluter for the rest of my days in the building. The butt of office humor.
If someone else had been there when the elevator showed up, it might have been okay. We could have laughed and complained about the smell the whole way down, advertising that we did not endorse that particular olfactory offense. Being alone it would never work, as I would fall directly under the "he who smelt it dealt it," rule.
I waited for the elevator to close, counted to 10 and hit the call button again. No luck! That tainted elevator wasn't going anywhere. I thought about the stairs. I thought about the ridicule. I thought about the smell.
I took the stairs down a floor and hit the elevator button again. Same elevator! Damn Damn Damn! If I could have caught that stupid gas bag at that moment, I would have sentenced them to a morning of riding in their own funk.
I gave up and went back to work...who needs breaks anyway?
Posted by sychotic1
at 11:01 AM PDT