Another lonely traveller through the blue nowhere…

Ten to nine on a Monday morning, the lift-lobby of my office completely deserted, I call a lift, board and push “14” - and THEN twenty other people arrive, all stopping at floors one through thirteen. The claustrophobic at the back (me) takes a deep breath, grits his teeth and closes his eyes. This is all made worse by the lift doors, which are broken and take fully thirty seconds to open and another thirty to close, the sheer density of the crowd, which precludes any idea of escaping to wait for another lift and the weather, which is a balmy 29 centigrade outside and a stifling 38 in the airless, enclosed, crowded lift…

Is this a familiar story to you, too? Welcome to my working days.

I don’t understand the lack of manners that causes people to cram into lifts when they are already overcrowded.

You know the scenario: You’re going down to the lobby to collect a visitor. The lift is stopping at every floor on the way down to be filled with smelly smokers desperate to escape for their next cancer-stick. It gets crowded. Then, you stop on a floor about halfway down, and there it is – The Behemoth.

The lift is crammed. You have an anonymous nicotine addict wedged into each armpit, a midget’s elbow crushing your testicles and a sweat-stained back in your face. You look at The Behemoth. You survey the lift. You can see the lazy, chubby, fat-arsed, androgynous blob surveying the lift. You see the light of decision in its eyes. You think “You must be fucking joking!”, then realise you’ve said it out loud. The Behemoth advances like a fleshy snow-plough, crushing helpless passengers even further into the steel walls of the lift as it advance… At this point, it’s not uncommon for claustrophobes like myself to pass out, but to be unable to fall due to the density of the crowd in the lift. Personally, I normally wake up about halfway between standing and prone (heading rapidly for the latter) as the lift empties on the ground floor.

I have to wonder: Is it just me who thinks that when the lift is clearly full already you should just smile and wait for the next one? I understand the demands of nicotine, I smoked for fifteen years. I know that sometimes you’re running late and need to get to your desk. I concede that there are all kinds of reasons while you might be in a rush. I don’t, however, see any of them as reasons to completely abandon all manners and niceties and cause a lift full of people to suffer even more than they already are.