Tag Archives: Work

Stuck in the elevator with five guys and one pizza

Last week I got stuck in an elevator with five other people. Luckily, one of them happened to be a pizza delivery guy and, you guessed it, he still had his pizza that he was supposed to be delivering after he got off the elevator. I immediately told the group that this pizza represented our only chance at survival if this elevator remained trapped for an extended period of time. The pizza delivery guy tried to brush me off, “Let’s just hold on for a second,” while somebody else tried pressing some of those emergency buttons on the wall.

The buttons didn’t do anything. I’ve always had the suspicion that most elevators just have a bunch of fake buttons to keep people from freaking out. It’s the same thing with those rounded mirrors in the top corners. You think there are any cameras behind there? There aren’t. The only reasonable explanation for those mirrors is so you can check everyone else riding in the elevator at the same time as you. And for real, that’s not a serious explanation. It’s just a trick, just like the fake buttons.

One of the buttons worked, the one that rang that alarm bell. But it was a real bell, and it was definitely attached to the elevator that we were stuck in, so I told the guy to stop pressing it, because it was super annoying. He protested, arguing that somebody outside would hear the ringing and call for help.

“Call who? Who are they going to call?” I was getting impatient. “You’re just like one of those idiots who starts blaring their horn in bumper to bumper traffic. There’s absolutely nothing to be done about the situation except annoy everyone else with a really loud noise. Sounds like a great plan. Now can we please get back to this pizza while it’s still hot?”

I saw the pizza guy pull in his box a little tighter. What kind of a pizza place sends out its pies without one of those thermal bags? It must be that place right down the corner. Which led me to another question. Who the hell would order delivery from one block away? That’s just really lazy. Come on, take a five minute break, stretch your legs. You’ll save money on the tip. No, whoever took the time to make an actual phone call to a pizza place right downstairs, asking them if they’d send up an employee to deliver their pizza, they probably wouldn’t be worrying about a tip anyway.

But that was beside the point. It’s actually a good thing that someone was lazy enough to call, because otherwise I wouldn’t be in here with this pizza. But then again, if that person had just gone downstairs, maybe I’d have had to wait for an additional elevator, because I’m a gentleman and I always insist on holding the doors open for everyone else, and then I wouldn’t be stuck, someone else would. I’d be stuck upstairs for a few minutes, waiting for an elevator that wouldn’t be coming, but I wouldn’t be literally trapped, like I was right then, I would have given up eventually and taken the stairs.

But no thermal bag? That’s a shame. We could have all waited half an hour, forty five minutes, tops, before we had to address the food situation. “Just back off, all right buddy?” the pizza guy warned me. Please, don’t warn me. What’s a warning going to do in a situation with six people stuck in a tiny elevator?

“Here’s how it’s going to go,” I announced. “We each get one slice, while it’s hot. It’s the only fair way.”

Because who likes to eat cold pizza? I do. I actually like cold pizza. I don’t prefer it over hot pizza, but it’s still good. I don’t like my pizza to be piping hot, but just you know, five, five to seven minutes out of the oven. But room temperature pizza is great too. I’ll even eat it cold out of the fridge. I’ll even eat a frozen pizza out of the freezer. I’ve never done it, but I could. I could just let it thaw until it was room temperature. Or I could just chomp on it still frozen, just biting and swallowing.

That wouldn’t be ideal, but I could make it happen in an emergency. And that’s what this was, an emergency. I was pressing the pizza issue under the guise of its temperature, but I was really just trying to force everyone’s hand, make a move, right now, for the first round of pizza. I’d make it out to be like we’d divide it, evenly, and that everybody would get to either eat their slice right away, or save it for later. I was counting on the fact that most people weren’t currently dying for a slice of pizza. Hell, I wasn’t even that hungry. I just ate like five tacos.

But I’d eat my slice right away, thereby starting at an advantage of an even fuller stomach than everyone else. If we were really stuck in there for a while, everyone else would probably wisely save their slice for when they got really hungry. And in that situation, I’d think about the two extra slices in that box. Because there are only six of us, but eight slices of pizza, seven if you discount the slice that I was planning on having eaten immediately.

Then when everybody else finally broke down and went for their rations, I’d protest, “Come on! There are two perfectly good slices right there. I deserve one. I finished my slice yesterday. I didn’t think we’d be in here this long. You can’t all just eat pizza while I’m starving. I’ll go crazy. I won’t allow it!”

And people would tell me stuff like, “Well, you shouldn’t have eaten your slice right away. In fact, you were the one who told us we should eat our slices when we wanted to.” And that would just drive me into a rage. I’d start the craziest confined quarter temper tantrum until somebody said something like, “Fine, just give it to him. Jesus.” And that way I’d get two slices.

But eventually there’d be the issue of that last slice of pizza. I thought, I’ll probably have to wait to make a move, but I could press it a little faster if I could insist that we didn’t have too much time before it spoiled. In which case I’d insist on a lottery for the last slice. It would be silly to try and divide the last piece. First of all, nobody had a knife. It would be a mess. Secondly, there’s no way one sixth of a slice of pizza is going to satisfy anybody’s hunger. Better to give it away to one person.

Of course I’d rig the results. But everyone would be so famished, delusional with hunger, that they wouldn’t be paying attention to me fixing the contest. Only I would have my wits about me, because I’d have two slices of pizza digesting in my stomach, buying me just enough time to outwit everyone else. I’d win, I’d grab the slice, and then I’d have eaten three slices. That’s how you do it. That’s called making the best of a bad situation.

But actually, that plan wasn’t really the best. There was a whole pie there that I could have had all to myself. I immediately shifted my plan, which was tough, because I had already made such a big deal about us being stuck in there for potentially forever. But now I was all like, “You know what? I’m actually pretty sure I hear people working on the elevator. We should be out of here in twenty minutes, tops.” It only takes me twenty minutes to eat a whole pizza. Ask anybody. “So, wait a second,” I continued, “I actually ordered a pizza. I think that’s for me. Going up, right? Yeah, totally my pizza. So why don’t we just settle up right now, if you don’t mind, this is my lunch break, and I’m afraid my bosses won’t let me take an extra lunch break, because I always pull the broken elevator routine and, well, you guys know how it is, right? Here you go.”

The guy protested, but I was way more aggressive. I shoved a twenty in his face and grabbed the box. As I got into my third slice, I thought, this is awesome. I’m like a king here. I’ll out-survive everybody else in this elevator. But then the doors cracked open. It was two guys with some crowbars.

“Jesus!” the one guy said, “Why didn’t anybody press the alarm button? You know that’s the only way people know to call for a crew, right?”

And everybody filed out and I was stuck with a totally not so hot pizza that I paid for. My next trick was going to be getting my twenty bucks back after I had eaten the pizza, but I guess that wasn’t going to happen. And then I went up to work, I felt so sick from eating the whole pie, and my boss was like, “Rob! What the hell? You can’t just disappear for half an hour at a time! And to think I ordered you a pizza for doing such a great job. Good thing that idiot delivery boy didn’t even show up. I called up the pizza shop and apparently nobody in your generation knows how to work, because he took the day off also. I hope they fired that good for nothing piece of …”

And I just had to sit there and take it, because I had already pulled the stuck in the elevator excuse last week. That’s an excuse you can’t roll out too frequently, because the first time, the boss just thinks, that sucks, but the second time, in a week, he starts complaining to the super, “What’s with the elevator breaking down twice this week?” and the super looks at him and goes, “Twice?”

Lot of people in this city

The other day it was raining when I got out of work and when it’s raining in the afternoon everything’s always a lot grosser, a lot more uncomfortable, everybody’s all wet, but everybody’s doing whatever they can to stay as dry as possible, walking single file around large puddles, carrying around giant umbrellas, even bigger umbrellas, like a golf umbrella, one of those umbrellas that the fruit stand guy uses to protect all of his produce from the rain or the sun, all at the same time, a giant picnic umbrella, really, something you would bring out at the beach to guard you and your family and your ten best friends from the harmful rays of the sun. And I’m a lot taller than everybody else, and I’m never the kind of guy who brings an umbrella to work if it’s not raining in the morning because, what am I, I’m just going to have to permanently carry around this extra two pounds of dead weight every single day? It doesn’t rain that often. If it’s raining in the morning, obviously I’ll bring an umbrella. But I don’t understand where everyone gets an umbrella from when it starts raining in the middle of the day. I go to work in the morning, it’s dry, nobody has an umbrella. I step foot outside in the afternoon, it’s raining, everybody has an umbrella. What did I miss? What am I not doing that everybody else is doing? Because I know for a fact that regular normal non-crazy people don’t just always carry around umbrellas. What else do you have to always carry around? Snow shoes? Maybe an oar in case there’s a flood and you have to hitchhike home on a passing canoe, but the only way they’ll let you on is if you can help with the paddling, and how else would you paddle if you didn’t bring your spare oar? And I’m so much taller than everybody else, so come quittin’ time when everybody races out their doors, trying to beat everybody else in the city to the subway, I’m standing at direct eye level with everyone else’s giant umbrellas, and I’m just constantly avoiding getting my eyes poked out, and because I’m so nervous about those umbrella spokes which, why are they so sharp and pointy anyway, I don’t notice all of the puddles, and of course I didn’t bring my galoshes, so my feet are soaked, and on these rainy afternoons the rush hour commute just feels a lot more crowded, like when people get wet they just expand, and they get slower, and crankier, and I can’t get my metrocard out of my wallet because my fingers are wet, and the plastic that the metrocard is made out of, it completely loses its grip when wet, but it doesn’t matter because there’s a huge line at the turnstile, because it takes people forever to fold up their umbrellas, keep the line moving, put away their umbrellas, shake out the excess water right on my feet, but my feet are already wet so, whatever, keep trying with the metrocard, nobody can really get a grip, and then going underground, on this particular day, really it was very frustrating, but this guy finally just screams out something like, “Jesus fucking Christ! You fucking people need to learn how to fucking move! Fuck fuck fuck!” and I’m just looking at this dude screaming his crazy screaming in the middle of the subway platform and he looks just like me, just like some guy who doesn’t want to be where he is so badly that the stress and the pressure boils over and it just gets to him and he starts shaking his fists at the universe, and I just started getting really angry at this guy, I really considered yelling back because, what the hell? Do you think you’re the only person inconvenienced by this mob of slow moving human beings? Or the weather? Or being wet? Or feeling uncomfortable? He was mad and he got to express himself and now I was mad and I wanted to express myself, but what would I say, “Shut the fuck up asshole!” or “Why don’t you just calm down there pal?” How confrontational would I get? And nobody ever expects these things to work out. It’ll only just escalate. And we’re underground and what happens if things got heated and somebody got pushed and, you know what? Let that guy have his little temper tantrum. I bet he feels like a big man, telling everybody off, telling everybody to stop getting in his way, making his life a little bit more inconvenient than it had to be. You know what I should have said? I should have said, “Listen buddy, why don’t you move someplace far away from the city, where there are no people to get in your way, someplace real dry, where it never rains, and where nobody has to work, and nobody has to commute, and then you won’t be pissed off. That’ll solve all of your problems my friend.” Actually, no I wouldn’t have said that either. That would have been really way too long and there’s no way I would have gotten all of that out without him interrupting me, going back at me, and then I would have gotten all flustered and my blood would have started to boil and I wouldn’t have known quite what to say so I’d just start saying things like, “Oh yeah?” but really loud, because volume always trumps substance. But that would have led to a path towards escalation also and, one time I read this article about how when too many human beings are close together and they start getting pushy that actual waves of energy start running through the crowd, like currents, like people can get crushed, lifted right out of their shoes, and then who gets charged with murder, everyone? Can you try several hundred people for the murder of one person? And how many sentences are we talking about, does everybody take turns in jail for a day or are we talking about individual multi-year sentences? Yeah, I did the right thing. I kept my mouth shut. Somebody poked me in the eye getting off the train, opening up their umbrella. It hurt, but my eye didn’t fall out, I didn’t get in anybody’s face, I just kind of went, “Ow … Geez,” semi-loudly, to nobody in particular. I’m pretty sure the person who poked heard me softly cry out, but I’m pretty sure I heard that same person say something to me like, “You gotta watch out buddy. Lot a people in this city,” all passive-aggressively, everybody hurrying home, hands in their pockets, heads in their hoodies.

I’m so goddamn funny! Hahaha!

Hahaha! I like to be so funny at work. Everyone thinks I’m the funniest. All day long I’m just making jokes and doing wacky stuff. Everyone loves it! There used to be this other guy that worked with us and everyone else also thought that he was pretty funny, and sometimes people would say, “I don’t know which one of you two is funnier!” but that guy got fired like three months ago, and so now it’s just me. I hated that guy, mostly because I was really jealous of him and afraid that one day someone would say to somebody else, “You know, I’ve though about it and I’ve decided that the other guy is actually much funnier,” and word would get back to me and I would get so pissed off. And I’d get really angry just imagining that happening, and it would stay with me for the rest of the day, really getting in the way of my sense of humor. But, like I said, he’s gone now, so I have the spotlight completely to myself. I go into work and everyone’s like, “Here’s Rob! Get ready to laugh!” Hahaha!

I do this thing where I go up to three unsuspecting coworkers and I’ll ask one of them which one of the other two coworkers he or she likes better. Ha! Like the other two people aren’t even there! Ha! Like I’m talking about them behind there back, right in front of them! Ha! It’s great. And then while everyone is busy laughing at that joke, I’ll make my own decision, I’ll say something like, “I’m going to have to go with …” and then I’ll just say a random name. And everyone is so busy laughing from the first part of the joke that they don’t even see the second part coming. And the laughing gets so crazy, so intense, it’s like the muscles on the sides of everyone’s jaw are aching from holding their mouths open in such a sustained heavy laugh for so long. Like everyone’s face is red and the laughing is so hard that it hurts. There’s a part of everyone that wishes they could just catch their breath, just for a second, just one breath because they are all running out of oxygen, but the laughter is so gripping that nobody can even relax their chest muscles at all, not even for a second, not even to take half a breath. It’s like everyone’s torso muscles are just locked in a flexed position, and it’s not even a laugh anymore, it’s beyond a laugh, it’s just a bunch of deep-red-faced people standing around twitching almost violently because they’re stuck in the grip of a profoundly deep seismic laugh. It’s great!

Everyone at work has to be clean-shaven every day. I know, right? Crazy. What is this the army? Ha! That was funny! I say funny little witty comments like that all the time at work. Like the boss will post a memo about some new rule, and I’ll just point to it and say to everyone, “Geez, what is this, the Marine Corps?” and everyone will just laugh and laugh. Anyway, one time for a whole month I only shaved one side of my face, letting the other side get all beardy. Every time my boss came into the room, I’d make sure that she was only facing me from my clean side. As soon as she turned away from me, I’d switch sides and silently point out my bearded profile to everyone else, right behind her back. Everyone would start laughing and my boss wouldn’t get it, obviously, so she’d turn around to see what was going on, but while she was turning around, I’d expertly rotate my body 180 degrees, almost in unison with her turning around to me, and I’d pretend like I was working really hard, not even paying attention to what was going on. She would get really flustered at the other employees for fooling around on the job too much, and while she yelled at them, I’d turn around again and start dancing behind her, constantly switching sides, alternating between serious, clean-shaven Rob and zany, bearded Rob. This only made my coworkers laugh even more, and it was made my boss even angrier, because this was all going down just as everyone was getting yelled at for laughing and goofing off in the first place, and they were trying really hard not to laugh, like biting down on their fists and pretending that the laughing wasn’t laughing, but coughing, but it wasn’t convincing at all. That was so funny! People are still talking about how funny that was! Ha!

I have this other trick where I walk around with a teapot. Hahaha! It’s crazy! Usually, when someone’s walking around with a teapot, it’s usually filled with boiling water. You know, for like tea and stuff. So I started this little game where I would walk around with a teapot, making sure to take really careful steps, holding it by the edge very cautiously, and then as soon as I got near a coworker, I would pretend like I’m spazzing out and I’d lose control of the teapot. But, hahaha! here’s the twist: there wouldn’t ever be any hot water in the teapot. Get it? So whoever was by me would get all freaked out, would get ready for a scalding hot burn, but just after all of the muscles in their body finished clenching up they’d realize that it was all a big prank! And the teapot always made this hollow crashing sound to the floor and that’s when everyone would start laughing like crazy! And after whoever it was realized that it was empty, they’d just catch their breath and then kind of shoot me this look that said without saying it, “Who else but Rob G.?” before joining in the laughter with everyone else. It’s hilarious! (Although one time I actually did drop a pot of really hot tea on somebody, but this person must have been so conditioned to laughing whenever I had a teapot that, instead of crying out in pain, he just doubled over on the floor, busting a gut. I’d like to think that I made a normally terrible experience just a little bit more enjoyable.)

I do all sorts of crazy stuff at work! I hide people’s stuff and then leave little notes that are half-jokes/half-clues, all leading back to their missing stuff! I’ll dip my hand in honey and then walk around the room giving unsuspecting coworkers high-fives! I called up a coworker’s phone from a payphone down the block and told them I was the cops and that their parents got locked up for a vast money-laundering scheme! I fill up everybody’s drinks with Tabasco sauce! I replaced all of the Tabasco sauce with cherry syrup! I replaced all of the cherry syrup with vanilla syrup! I replaced all of the vanilla syrup with good maple syrup! I replaced all of the good maple syrup with gross Log Cabin artificial maple flavored syrup! One time I mixed up all of the labels on the soda machine! When one guy lost his wallet, I found it, but I stole fifty bucks! I’m so goddamn funny! Ask anyone! Hahaha! Hahahahaha! Ha!