"Going Up To Four," & Other Elevator Musings

I worked in downtown Minneapolis for twenty-seven years, 1980 to 2007.  For the last nineteen of those years I was perched on the seventeenth floor of the Wells Fargo Tower, with a slivered view of a short span of the Mississippi River several blocks away to the north.  Except for a period of about two years in the mid-eighties when my office was on the third floor of the Investors' Building, one story above the Skyway, my co-workers (in corporate speak, "teammates") and I rode an elevator several times a day to get to and from our desks.  All the foregoing is to set the stage for this claim: I have ridden my share of "lifts" over the years.  What follows are some observations, quips, homemade rules, rants and even a personal historic moment for me related to that experience.

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You can always tell a rookie rider by the way they get on and off the elevator car.  The unwritten rule, apparently unbeknownst to the newbies, is similar to that of entering or alighting from a subway car.  When you are waiting to gain access, you should stand off to the side, i.e., on either side of the door, so that the exiting passengers can have the center pathway onto the platform or the floor, as the case may be.  Rookie riders waiting to get on insist on standing right in front of the door, smack dab in the middle like a tackling dummy. Then when it opens some of them barrel right in, thus obstructing the evacuation of those in the car who want to get out.  In addition to thereby displaying a total lack of common sense, such behavior is also mystifying because (i) there is no such thing as a choice spot to stand inside an elevator car in most office buildings -- I'd grant an exception for elevator cars with glass window-walls, except there are none downtown -- and (ii) how can anyone be that excited to take an elevator ride, especially if they're on their way to work?  These are the same preoccupied people who refuse to step out of a crowded elevator car temporarily to make room for those in the back row who need to exit at an earlier-reached floor.  Sigh.   

 

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Teachers often instruct their pupils to use their "inside voices" until they get to the playground.  Unfortunately there are some adults who are incapable of transporting that wisdom to an elevator scenario.  Of course, it's always the person with the loudest natural voice who insists upon speaking at a volume clearly audible to everyone present.  Here is my rule for those riding in a crowded car:  If you are getting off on the same floor as the person you're addressing who is not standing right next to you, call a conversation timeout until you've reached your destination.  Then step out and carry on as loudly as you wish; otherwise, spare the rest of us the headache.  If you're conversing with someone not from your floor, you may each utter one or two short, softly spoken exchanges.  If you have more to say, well, that's why we have telephones, e-mails and texting available to us.

 

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Another irksome behavior during an elevator ride is being with a coin jingler.  I could count on at least several rides a week when I would be in the same car with a guy jingling the coins in his pocket.  Maybe I was the only downtown worker who found this annoying, but, come on!  Can't you be in an elevator for sixty seconds without jingling your coins?  Men don't jingle their coins when they're walking down the street.  Why does being in an elevator prompt that idea?  Pavlov's dogs?  At least I rarely had a ride longer than seventeen floors.

 

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This behavioral trait of elevator riders is one I actually find amusing.  Many elevator cabs, including the ones in the Wells Tower, have lighted floor designations which flash on and then quickly off, one at a time, as each floor is passed.  This horizontal row of lights is above the doors.  Then there is a set of buttons for passengers to request a stop.  These buttons light up when pushed, then turn off as the elevator slows to a stop at the respective floor.  These buttons are next to the doors at eye level.  It is interesting to see how many people, craning their necks, are mesmerized by the flashing light show above the doors, when simply looking at the lighted buttons on the side would tell them when their floor has been reached.  They must have sore cervical spines from gazing up, as if in a trance.  This begs the question, what did they expect to see up there?

 

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Is this an example of one-upmanship, or simply filling a conversational void?  This describes an extremely brief dialogue I had with a Wells banker named Rick whose office was also in the tower.  He and I never worked together -- he was not a commercial banker -- but over the course of a few years we had taken many elevator rides together, Rick to 14 and yours truly to 17.  (Our elevator bank went from 1 to 19 in the fifty-seven story building.)  We knew each other only by our first names, but if we ran into each other in the Skyway or on the sidewalk, we'd exchange quick pleasantries.  One autumn afternoon I left my office around 3:30, and it was clear from the jacket I was wearing that I was leaving for the day.  When I got on the elevator there was no one else in the car.  It stopped at 14, and Rick came on board.  Although this happened in the year 2001, I hereby submit a verbatim record of our conversation during the fifteen seconds it took to get down to the ground floor:

 

Rick: Leaving for the day?

 

Me: Yes, I'm going to watch my daughter, Jill, in a swim meet in St. Louis Park.  She's one of the captains on Benilde-St. Margaret's team.

 

[Silence for eight or nine seconds, while Rick tries to think of something to say.  Finally the doors open at the ground floor and Rick steps forward to exit, then turns toward me.]

 

Rick: My next door neighbor's niece is the captain of the Mounds View team.  Have a good day!

 

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I wrote earlier on this blog (January 12, 2016) that people remember where they were and what they were doing when first learning of tragic historic events, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Kennedy.  I will always remember my elevator ride on the morning of September 11, 2001.  I had taken the bus downtown, and boarded a crowded elevator to take me up to the seventeenth floor.  One of the paralegals in my Commercial Law Group, Sherry Ewert, was standing  behind my right shoulder.  She asked if I had heard what happened that morning in New York City.  When I told her I hadn't, she informed me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and that it may not have been an accident.  This was before the second plane crashed into the other WTC tower.

 

The Law Department shared the seventeenth floor with the Wells Government Relations Department.  The latter department possessed the only television on the entire floor.  Many of us from both departments jammed into the small conference room where the TV was hooked up, and witnessed the networks' reportage of the awful events.  As you can imagine, we were glued to that set for the longest time.  When news of the other hijacked planes -- two of them outside New York -- became public, no one knew for sure if other buildings in other cities might be targeted.  Finally, around 10:45, the honchos in San Francisco advised us by phone to leave if we felt unsafe in the tower.  I'm not sure how many of us might have left early that day even without that green light, but in any event, I was back home by noon.

 

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Shortly after the 1998 merger of Norwest with Wells Fargo, the company moved its corporate headquarters from Minneapolis to San Francisco.  Before that event, the executive offices resided on the fourth floor of the tower, meaning that's where you'd find the CEO, the CFO, the COO, various regional presidents and department heads of the huge bank holding company, and other men and women wearing very expensive suits.  The "silk stocking gang," you might say.  The general counsel of the corporation, Stan Stroup (whom I've mentioned in two other posts, May 23, 2014 and March 16, 2015), set up shop on 17 with the rest of the lawyers, even though as a direct report of the CEO, Dick Kovacevich, he certainly was entitled to office on 4 had he so chosen.

 

One day I needed to meet with Stan, but when I walked over to his office his secretary, Julie Voels, informed me that he was "up on four."  "Up on four?" I asked, thinking that Julie got her directions mixed up.  She then informed me that the joke was Stan's creation.  When he met with the big boys he was "going up" even though they were thirteen floors below us.

 

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I've poked fun here about clueless, rude, coin jingling, transfixed elevator riders, so maybe the last entry should be on me; it's only fair.  When I was in fourth grade and my sister, Michele, was in second, our parents took us from Chicago to New York City on the New York Central Railroad.  We stayed in the Waldorf Astoria -- the Marquis must have had a good year -- and saw all the sights tourists to that city enjoy: the Statue Of Liberty, the United Nations, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, etc.  When we entered the Empire State Building, a one hundred two story skyscraper, I could hardly wait to get to the top.  There was an Otis Elevator crew working inside the shaft of one of the other nearby elevators which was temporarily out of commission.  Just before we set foot inside the car to which we were assigned, I heard a woman ask an usher, "Are these elevators safe?"  The usher replied, "Why yes, m'am, the Otis crew just put some fresh scotch tape on the cables this morning."

 

I wished I hadn't heard that.  Gullible me did not get the humor.  During the whole time we were in the building, I was more worried about the elevator ride than I was vertigo or fear of heights.

 

That leeriness toward elevators has carried on into my adult life to a modified extent.  Now I am not afraid to ride in elevators, but I do not like to take rides up to the very top floor of any building.  What if the elevator shot through the roof?  Then what?