Currently trapped in an elevator, let me tell you how I got here.
The tale begins last night, I had something in my eye under/around my contact. It wasn’t so bad though and I was out and about so I was kinda distracted and wasn’t able to take it out anyway. It stayed there for a few hours.
By the time I took out my contact it was orgasmic sweet relief (my contact wearers know what I’m talking about), BUT whatever was in there was still wreaking havoc.
I tried to rinse out my eye with contact solution for a good while but it wasn’t budging and it was bedtime “Surely,” I thought, “ it will be absorbed or expelled from my eye by morning.”. Welp, I was wrong.
I woke up with the thing still in my eye! Again, I tried to rinse it out to no avail, muttering various curses under my breath at the foreign object that had the AUDACITY to take up residence under my eyelid. Upon inspection the “fucker” was nowhere to be seen either. This was either a very smart thing, or maybe the previous thing scratched my eye so badly it still felt like there was something there.
In trying to stave off the cabin fever from being in my apartment, I decided to just head to work (going twice a week to stave of having cabin fever in my apt) with one contact (in my weaker eye) and bring my other one with me because surely I would blink and have this thing expelled by 2:32pm at the latest. I would have brought my glasses, but they’re an old prescription and any time I wear them my eyes get lazy and have to readjust for a day when i switch back to contacts.
Welp, the little thing never budged. At about 4pm I accepted my fate after having worked for a few hours with a (weak) eye that was tired of doing all the heavy lifting on its own all day. Have you ever had to work with one eye? One that still felt like there was a boulder in it even when it was closed? While having to do highly valued work where mistakes are costly? It was an interesting experience for sure, definitely not the highlight of my day though.
Work, luckily, was relatively slow and quiet. While I did do work, it wasn’t as much as it has been (everybody trying to get everything out before the holidays, ya know?).
There were definitely trying moments though, as there often are. People not being as smart as they could be. Like for example when a client comes back asking something like “Hey, remember that job we did and you gave us the files for? Could you please send those over again since we never actually saved/archived them? Could you please send us everything that was final?”. Doing things like this is my job, and I’m not complaining by any means (it is job security after all), but it does get tiring.. Not to mention people all around making things harder than they need to be and obviously not thinking of the best/most efficient ways of doing things (they have more important concerns I guess).
COVID has also brought with it a new culture in the work environment. The boundaries are getting pushed between work/life now that these things are so intertwined. Everyone is working longer hours with no additional compensation, tensions are high from needing the most pristine work as possible and of course they need it as soon as possible. I understand the mentality and love working under pressure/constraints (a fun training/workout mentally for me), but c’mon people the majority of the work being done in my industry isn’t exactly saving lives.. I just wish that people could relax a little bit and shake out the sand from between their buttcheeks, realize that things take the time they need to take and 5min later or a mistake (not saying mistakes are acceptable) is not the end of the world– the fact that we’re all still here and breathing is proof of that.
Anyway, it’s the life, whatever floats people’s boats as long as it doesn’t infringe on the life, liberty, health, or happiness of another being.
So after dealing with my eye and the stresses of work, it was nearing the end of my day and at 7:50pm I couldn’t wait to be off work in 10min, and then it happened.. I’m sure this has happened to you too.. a work email came in, signaling that I was not leaving work on time, HORRAY! haha I laugh now, but in the moment it was a little annoying of course.
I took care of the work, but guess what? There was an error in what was sent :)). So after doing that work, I had to wait for the work to be fixed which took awhile. I have been working from the office just two days a week to stave off cabin fever and this was one of those days, I just wanted to get home.
After considering my options, I decided to GTFO and bring in the fixed files with my remote capabilities, this proved to not be the best decision because this is how I got stuck in the elevator. I went to leave, and bada-bing-bada-boom there I was in an elevator that was trying to go down but just couldn’t do it. I think this was possibly my karma for telling the person sending the files that I would wait for their arrival.
So there I was, hard day and trapped for who knows how long it would be (turned out to be something like 1-1.5hrs). I made good use of the time and ended up calling/texting people that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the time to talk to. One of them told me that the best thing to do in an elevator is to lay down, so that’s what I did (thanks friend!).
Now most people would have been upset, but at this point I couldn’t help but laugh. Of course I was stuck in the elevator, what else should I have expected with the day that I had? I also couldn’t help but be grateful, perhaps getting stuck in the elevator was to prevent me from crossing the path of the wrong person on the street/subway, that’s entirely possible as well.
I went through calling and texting various friends who couldn’t believe it and also were freaked out. I learned that many of my friends have a fear of elevators despite most elevators having two sets of emergency brakes and a set of huge springs at the bottom to soften the impact.
After I finished with my friends, I ended up calling my mom (I’ve been doing my best to call her more since I’m her only child very far away) and that was definitely a fun conversation.
Me: “Hi mom!”
Her: “Hi son! How are you? Oh and where are you?” (I had facetimed her)
Me: “Oh I just found some extra time by getting stuck in an elevator and thought I would use it to call you!”
Her: “WHAT?! ARE YOU OK?! WHY ARE YOU STUCK? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?!” etc. etc.
Lord bless my mother’s heart for the anxiety that I gave her that night.
Once I consoled her that I was indeed ok, stuck by an act of God, and haven’t been there for too terribly long (an hr is nothing in the grand scheme of things) I told her I would call her back once I was safe and sound.
While I was in the elevator I started writing this article and later I was freed.
I wanted to write this to vent kinda sorta, but also I wanted to trigger some thinking. I wonder how you would have reacted to a day/situation like that?
Would you have gotten mad? Would you have let a cruddy day (really not cruddy in the grand scheme of things) get to you? How would you have spent your time? Would you have made the most of it, or would you go and aimlessly scroll social media? Would you have laughed at the humor of the universe/your situation?
Just something to think about, I hope you enjoyed reading about my cruddy day and elevator laughter.
If you got nothing else out of this, at least you learned the best way to survive if you get into an elevator that gets stuck– lay down.
All the best,
FCP 🙃
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