stuck in a moment you can't get out of

Also, I got stuck in a lift for over an hour yesterday. Ironically, to abate my panicking I settled down to watch the next episode of The Office on my iPod... only to find it was this one!

Only cottoning on that The Office: An American Workplace has some amazing folks directing... the last three episodes I've watched in season three have been directed by Josh Whedon, J.J. Abrams, and Harold Ramis respectively. It must be a great exercise for these guys to do something so completely different (apart from Ramis, obviously), that it does in a twisted way make perfect sense...

Anyway, yes. Stuck in an elevator, suspended between Ground and First. We had a go at the alarm button. "Press 3 for jammed doors. Press 9 for trapped persons." Except the building only has 8 floors, leading to distinct absence of a 9 button. So that took a while to actually get a person to shout at a few times. In between we got enough reception on my mobile to phone upstairs, and thankfully not everyone had gone home for the weekend.

By the time we got out, the maintenance on-call guy still hadn't arrived. A couple of the hospital maintenance technicians had decided to go up and physically worked the mechanism to lift the elevator up to first, and then hauled the door open (this could not be done between floors as a safety device kicks in to - and this is the genius bit - seal the doors closed for the safety of the passengers stuck inside.)

A particular moment of humour occurred when the only way back down to Ground was in the other lift. Decided to use the emergency exit stairs instead.

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