Trapped in an elevator (anyone?)

[Rad]

So it was two weeks ago. I was going home from a lecture in the morning. The lecture was at 7:30 am! Could you believe that! It was important so I had to go...

Anyway, was home by 9:30am and went into the elevator to get to my 3rd-floor room. The elevator came, doors open & I went in. Pushed button for 3rd floor, doors closed and then...nothing

The freakin' elevator stopped with me inside! I was like: This can't be happening!

This happens to some other people just not me!

Add to the problem, I wasn't bringing my cell-phone!

Freakin alarm button didn't do a thing. As I found out it emits noise alerting other people outside that someone is trapped inside. BUT if there was nobody outside...well

So I was inside that them elevator for close to 15minutes. Replaying all things that could have gone wrong with me inside while pushing the button every several minutes...Let's just say panic was raising fast. I even tried to do a McGuyver by looking for a hatch to open on the ceiling of the elevator

Honestly! They made it oh-so-easy in the movies. But there was this lamp over me and the real ceiling was behind a fake ceiling. I guess...

Finally somebody heard my panic-cum-alarm-button noise outside & tried to get me out. He said he's calling the janitor. Only to come back & said that the janitor wasn't answering... Oh well....

He did tried something with the buttons outside & suddenly the doors opened. I was REALLY thankful to him. He said he was just punching the button outside & didn't know why the doors opened. Nevertheless...

Suffice to say that since then I have NEVER use the elevator again. There are two in my dorm building and now I always go up and down by stairs

[Richard Norway]

Suffice to say that since then I have (vowed to) NEVER use the elevator again. There are two in my dorm building and now I always go up and down by stairs

I was stuck in an elevator in San Francisco once many years ago, but fortunately, I wasn't alone. There were about a half dozen strangers in there with me. We were in there for about 10 minutes. It was dead quiet for the first minute, but then someone started speaking, probably to keep us all calm.

About 5 minutes into this incarceration...the lights went out. All I could thing of was the 20ish blond cutie in the corner and what would happen if I went over and grabbed him...or he decided to come after me. Actually, I just made that up. I was scared shitless.

A minute later the lights came on, and the sighs of relief from the others was only drowned out by my own.

Then the elevator started moving again, opened at the floors whose buttons had been pushed, and went on about it's business as if nothing had happened. I never saw anyone at the floors that the elevator stopped at to let off passengers.

I found out later that the security guards at the front desk knew immediately that the elevator was stuck. Evidently the technician who was working om the problem flicked the wrong switch or something that caused the lights to go out.

I too had stopped using elevators for anything less than a four floor travel. It was good exercise. I think I gave in a year later and now still use them.

[Trab]

I escaped a major elevator story by the luck of the draw.

My brother and I used to deliver morning newspapers in our home town, and not just a few, but several hundred. Each morning, we'd bicycle down to the distribution point, then decide who was going to do which side of the street. I got the north side that fateful day. My brother, feeling lucky, got the south side. Lucky, because there were two apartment buildings on that side, and he could get rid of almost a third of his deliveries in those two buildings. Little did he know that the gods of paperboys was not on his side that day.

I got to the end of my 'route' and found my brother, Al, was not there. That wasn't unusual, since 'stuff' happens and some blocks had more customers than others, and you could surge ahead. However, 20 minutes later, he still hadn't surfaced. I had no choice but to go backwards along the route, looking for him. An hour's delay would be critical, as then we might not make it to school on time, not to mention very worried parents. Long before cell phones, there was not much else to do but make the long ride in the other direction.

Eventually, almost 75% of the way back, I found his bicycle, neatly parked in front of the second apartment building, papers still there too, but no Al. In I went, using my key, we each had one for each building, and found him. Or, more correctly, found a very frustrated brother, locked in the elevator, halfway between the ground floor and 1st floor, and a harried looking manager. The explanation, while logical, was rather depressing. It seems that they had wanted to do some severe maintenance work, which included replacing a huge bundle of control cables, and, without any thought beyond their own selves, had simply cut them out at 5 a.m. without ever marking the elevator as 'DO NOT USE' or even seeing if it was in motion at the time. They thought that nobody would ever use it that early.

We were not pleased. They were not pleased. Tenants were not pleased. Because they had to rewire the thing to let out my brother, a 2 hour task (once discovered), everyone had to use the stairs (7 floors) and my brother almost exploded from needing to use the bathroom. I ended up having to do his whole route myself, and that included walking up the stairs to the apartments Al had never even gotten up to. By the time all was said and done, Al had been locked in there for just over 3 hours, with no light, phone or anything. For the rest of the time we did that route, we both carried very long handled and very thick screwdrivers. It seems that you CAN pry open the doors, but you need a strong probe to do it. The size of the door is such that you can always either slip out to the floor below, or the floor above, but you have to use your pry bar on both sets of doors, the elevator and the outside shaft door.

It has not stopped me from using an elevator, but one thing is for sure, I NEVER go in one if I need to use the bathroom really badly. I just know what will happen if I ever do.

[dude]

Wow.... Instant Flash NON Fiction!

[aj]

I got stuck in the elevator at work just the other day...was heading down a floor to go home (my bike lives in the garage at work when I'm taking care of old folks), so I got in, pushed the button and...nothing. all the buttons completely nonresponsive. i knew that this had been happening from time to time, so I didn't panic...tried to call out with my cell phone and couldn't get reception in the elevator shaft. used the emergency phone, but it doesn't allow one to talk, just sends a pre-recorded message to the front desk. I was dressed in my cold weather biking clothes, so I started sweating. I had just worked a double shift, so I was tired as hell and decided that the thing to do was just curl up and take a nap. Sadly, before I could lay down the elevator restarted and delivered me to the basement.

cheers!

aj