My harrowing experience trapped in an elevator

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was going to take a break from work earlier this evening. I work on the third floor, and was going to the first floor. I got on the elevator, pushed “1” and watched as the doors closed.

Then nothing happened. Hmm, that’s odd, thinks I.

I checked that I’d pushed the correct button. Yep.

I checked that I was on the floor I thought I was on. Yep, still 3.

I pushed “3,” thinking maybe it would say, “Oh! Here we are!” and open up. Nothing.

I pushed “Door Open.” Nothing.

Shiver.

I said a very rude word out loud. That, too, was no help.

I realized I didn’t have my cell phone. I briefly considered pushing the alarm button, just to see what it sounded like, but I figured it would be pretty loud in the elevator.

I remembered those telephones! Opened up the little box, and there was a phone, one of the old rotary kind with an actual dial on it. Picked it up: dial tone. Yes!

Realized I had no idea what the number for security was.

Considered calling 911, but that would have been seriously embarrassing.

Then I noticed a little note taped there, with not just one but TWO numbers to call for security. I got two digits into dialing, and…

The elevator started moving. It took me to the first floor without incident.

The entire horrible, traumatic experience probably took about a minute.

Hold me.

2

You’ll need to press the “Hold Me” button. If that doesn’t work, there’s a number you can call, and a technician will attend to you promptly.

3

ALWAYS call 911 from your cellphone and get those firefighters on the scene. Otherwise, you may be waiting a LONG time (the technician will just say they’re attempting to contact the elevator company). The firemen will mess up the doors trying to get you out, and your building adminstrative office won’t be amused. However, you’ll get out in a flash.

I’m borderline claustrophobic, so that’s my take on it. (And I’m married to a firefighter!)

4

Blonde, I’m mildly claustrophobic as well, but an elevator isn’t small enough to set me off. The “back seat” of a sportscar, on the other hand, is grim torture.

I wasn’t too worried, though I did reach up and check the ceiling tiles to see if I could get out that way if necessary (I don’t think I could, even though I’m pretty athletic; there are light fixtures to get through). And it did seem like it was getting hot in there, though that may have been a budding panic attack that was mercifully cut off when the elevator started moving.

The whole experience wasn’t much to tell of, really; I mentioned it only because we’ve all wondered what it would be like to be trapped in an elevator, and for the first time I (briefly) considered it as a real possibility.

5

:smiley: You tell a good story.

Glad nothing worse happened.

6

The high-rise dorm I used to live in had terrible elevators that were replaced during my time there. A lot of people frequently got trapped in them; I managed to escape that. One time, about a dozen teenaged cheerleaders got trapped in one because they decided to practice their routine on the ride down to the first floor. Fun was not had by all.

The only elevator incident I’ve been involved with was after one set of elevators had just been replaced. I was riding one of them up to the laundry room when it suddenly slipped and free fell a couple floors before the brakes or something caught. That free falling happened a few more times with some of my friends riding them.

7

When I still worked at the Beeb I once got into a lift containing the gorgeous, pouting ** Anne Robinson**, yes, that one, just me and the Wicked Witch of the West in a confined space.
The damn lift ground to a halt between floors, not for long - maybe a few seconds, but it was long enough for my life to flash before me, and for my balls to contract involuntarily into my body.

8

Funnily enough, I recently read that the above would be the plot of the next Mary Kate and Ashley movie.

:smiley:

The president of the university I attended got stuck in the elevator at the student center once, by himself. He shouted for help, and referred to himself as “President” so-and-so (which was fairly unusual for him, since he was mostly low-key). The cafeteria worker who heard him shouted back, “You are not! Who are you really!”

Boy, was he surprised when maintenance got it open.

9

shudder

The worst for me was once an elevator inexplicably opened between floors. What a jarring sight, given it was so unexpected. I briefly contemplated climbing out, as it sat there for a good amount of time like that. But I thankfully realized how dangerous that would be. (Sometimes I’m a ditz, so I need to be grateful when I make smart choices. ha ha ha)

It did eventually return to the lobby, properly.

10

So if you’re stuck in the elevator alone, how long do you have to wait before resorting to cannibalism ?

11

Five minutes, T. Slothrop. One should never be scared out of one’s wits on an empty stomach.

plain_jane, that reminds me of a time I got to watch someone being rescued from an elevator that had stalled between floors. The floor of the cab was about three feet higher than it should have been. The poor gal was okay, if a little unnerved being stuck in an elevator for 30 minutes waiting for a technician to arrive.

One of the academic buildings on campus has a really creepy elevator. It’s all off on it’s own at the front of the building. The inside is entirely painted blood red. I get goosebumps everytime I wind up having to ride in that elevator. It’s like getting into Satan’s personal lift to Hell.

12

I got stuck in a packed elevator in Hong Kong with a group of Fillippino friends of mine. We were heading for the 15th floor, but when we got to it, we didn’t stop - we just carried on up and up and up, until we passed the top floor of the building. I was concerned that we might shoot out the top like Charlie and his Great Glass one, but eventually the elevator went “grrrkkkkk” and stopped. This was in the days before cellphones. So we buzzed the alarm for ages and ages, but got no response. Then we amused ourselves by making farmyard noises. 45 minutes later, the elevator door was jemmied open from the bottom, and we peered downwards to see five or six firemen and a couple of cops. The elevator was about 4 feet above the top floor, so we had to climb down one by one to get out. The annoying thing was that this happened at the beginning of my lunch break. When I got back to the office late, I apologised, and told the truth about where I’d been. My boss did not believe me.

13

See, this wouldn’t have happened if we were still using good old paternoster elevators. I remember actually using one of these things when I was a little boy in Germany. I think they’re actually prohibited by law now, but I remember it was better than most roller-coaster rides.

14

The elevators in my residence during first-year university were a real joy. It got to the point that at times I decided I was much better off walking up to my room on the 12th floor. I lost count of the times it didn’t stop level with the floor, so you had to jump up or down a foot or so. The doors opened in between floors once, and then there was the time I rode all the way to the top and back down again, stopping at every floor, but the doors refused to open until I got back down to the ground floor. That was one of the times I chose to take the stairs.

At least a previous resident of my floor had a sense of humour about it. We were allowed to paint the hallways, so someone had made the elevator look like the portal to hell, complete with the warning “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” :smiley:

I wish I knew who’d done that.

15

In my university days we had the abandon hope all ye who enter here at the entrance to the dining room.

But our elevator had strange quirks also – often a step up or down to get the the floor wanted. And people regularly got stuck. Happened to me once half an hour before an exam.

Mostly it was quicker to walk. It just wasn’t that fast.

16

Lol!

I wonder why they chose to paint it that colour…

17

I used to work in a two-story bookstore. One day a co-worker of mine went on a ten-minute break, got into the elevator on the first floor (along with a woman and her young daughter), the doors closed, and … nothing. They banged on the doors until someone heard them.

We called the elevator company. They were closed. One of the nearby customers, who was doing an excellent job keeping the trapped people calm, suggested that we find the breaker to the elevator – we’d just located it when the firefighters arrived. They cut the power to the elevator, hoping that when the power came back the elevator would “wake up”. The thing dropped a few inches, but still wouldn’t open. The emergency door release also didn’t work

They ended up breaking the doors open with wedges and hammers and such. Elevators get very hot, very quickly when they have no power – my coworker, the woman, and her little girl (whose birthday it was, poor thing) were trapped in there for almost two hours.

18

Remember those rolling blackouts in California? (Some of you, I sense, can see where this story is headed.)

We had word that they might be shutting off the power at my grocery store and beyond at some point. Ah well, shit happens. So I’m going around, working as usual. Up in the freezer, I have the passing thought, “Man, that’d suck to get stuck in the elevator.” And with that, the thought was gone.

So I proceed to get stuck in the elevator. I yell down to the receiver guy, if only to let him know. They ask, “Do you want us to call the fire department?” I remember that I’m on the clock and have a pretty good excuse not to be working. “Nah, thanks.”

So I make myself comfortable (not easy to do on a textured chrome floor) and see if I can get some sleep. Can’t sleep, despite having woke up at 6:30 that morning. So I try to kill some time. There’s 6 cardboard boxes in there with granola or something in 'em. I stack them up, put my jacket and hat on it, carved a face into the side of the top box, and refer to my new friend as “Wilson.”

I had tried earlier to get the doors open, but being, quite frankly, pretty indifferent, I gave up quick. But I was starting to get bored, and a few people I had been talking (more like yelling) to seemed to be getting pretty concerned about me. So I started poking around and managed to get the inside door open. I saw that I was about six feet up from the first floor. I started prodding and poking the various wires and rods that were on my side of the outside door. One of them moved, and the whole door just kinda slid open. I poked my head out and said hi to the receiver, and went back to work. I was in there for about 45 minutes.

The weirdest part was hearing people carry on normal conversations in the receiving area with some guy stuck in a wall next to them.

19

Ick. Elevator stories.

Mine was kinda normal, kinda weird, until recently.

Many years ago, I was on a floral delivery to a hospital. I had my cute little green plant in my hand, got on the elevator, waited for all the other people…we all pushed our buttons, and started up. People off, people on, finally, it’s me and this fairly young doctor. We start up again, and BOOM! No lights. Abrupt stop. Ok, so we’re stuck.

Young doctor grabs for the emergency phone, is on phone yelling, and suddenly the dark elevator starts to DROP. We fall what turns out to be 7 floors, and land with a shuddering jerk. The doctor is on top of me, the green plant is all over, and my wrist is in a position that it shouldn’t be able to maintain. The lights come back on for about three minutes. Doctor looks down, sees my hand at an angle that doesn’t work out with the boneplan he’s recently learned…and starts to scream.

Maintenance guys panic, let the firefighters take out the doors and get us out. Doctor guy wouldn’t get into another elevator to go to emergency. The firefighters slammed me on a gurney and we took an elevator in a different bank.

Broken wrist, two “realignments” necessary, but it healed OK.

This all came back to the forefront of my recollections recently when a young doctor was decapitated…in a hospital elevator. Here in Houston. Same hospital. Same elevator.

Ewww, demon elevator!