"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?

The Silent Saint

Today, March 19, is the Feast of St. Joseph, the Silent Saint. Since he has always been one of my faves, I think it's only right to give him a quick shout out. I was inspired to do so after watching a video of NBC sports personality Bob Costas deliver a eulogy at the funeral Mass of the greatest St. Louis Cardinal of them all, Stan "The Man" Musial, two months ago. If you have nineteen minutes, but no more time to spare than that, you would be better served to skip my post here and find Costas' speech on YouTube. It is one of the best eulogies I've ever heard.

Musial was known not only for his tremendous baseball skills which made him a first ballot Hall of Famer -- only thirty-nine players have been so honored since the inaugural induction in 1936 -- but for the humility and genuineness he displayed throughout and after his career. To illustrate the point, Costas tells a short story about the 1995 funeral Mass of Mickey Mantle, at which Costas also delivered a eulogy. As Costas tells it, sitting in an ad hoc VIP section in the front pews was a throng of baseball celebrities, including Whitey Ford, Reggie Jackson, Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, and Willie Mays, to name a few. Mid-way through the Mantle eulogy, Costas looked out at the crowd and there was The Man, standing off to the side near the back of the church. This impressed Costas not only because it was apparent that Musial did not feel the need to be in the place of honor with all the other dignitaries, but also because Musial, unlike the other men in the VIP section, had no direct nexus to The Mick. They played in different leagues in different cities, and were polar opposites as far as life styles were concerned. At age seventy-five, Musial had taken a plane from St. Louis to Dallas for the sole purpose of paying honor to a baseball legend and giving comfort to the Mantle family. (Note: The eulogy Costas gave at Mantle's funeral is also available on YouTube.)

I recently ran across a similar anecdote about Bob Dylan while reading a lengthly feature which appeared in the Star Tribune on February 3, 2013. Writer Jon Bream relates how, when Dylan attended the graduation of his oldest child, Maria, from Macalaster College in 1983, "he stood off in the shadows, under a tree." It was his daughter's day, and he knew he'd become a distraction if he was spotted by others in attendance.

There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of stories about the new pope, Francis I. One recounts how when the conclave of cardinals was assembled in 2005 to elect the successor to the then-recently departed Pope John Paul II, there were enough ballots cast for Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires to place him a close second behind German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who, although he had the most votes, did not possess the requisite seventy-five percent majority. When it was time to conduct another vote, rather than actively campaign for more votes Cardinal Bergoglio suggested to his backers that they throw their support behind Cardinal Ratzinger. They did, and as a result Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI on the very next day. Cardinal Bergoglio's humility was not forgotten by his peers earlier this month, when they elected him to succeed Pope Benedict.

Back to St. Joe, a humble man who perhaps was among the very first persons for whom the saying, "It's not always about you" was modeled. (Of course, who had a better reason for realizing that truism?) He is called the Silent Saint because, even though he is one of the most renowned and important saints in the history of the Church, he is never quoted in the Bible. When you think of it, that is pretty amazing considering all the other New Testament figures (including the doubter, St. Thomas, and the traitor, Judas) who are quoted. Something tells me that is just the way Papa Joe would have wanted it.

Butter

In my introductory post of December 6, 2011 (Following David Brinkley's Lead) I indirectly posed the question if it was possible for one to plagiarize himself. In the context of this blog, I was referring to the possibility of republishing certain posts I have made on the website ND Nation or e-mails I've written to family and friends. To date, I have not yet availed myself of that convenience, but in light of the fact that tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the one day of the year when the subject of food is brought to the fore, the time has come for self-plagiarization and for me to pull an old one out of the desk drawer.

Assuming that we all hope to display at least some modicum of etiquette at the biggest dinner of the year, I am passing on to you, my faithful blog readers, an e-mail that I sent to my three kids on March 29, 2004. That was exactly thirteen days before Easter Sunday, another big annual food fest. I called my memo The Martha Stewart Memo # 2: Butter. In those days, whenever I wrote about etiquette, I called it a Martha Stewart Memo in honor of the perfectionist ex-con celebrity herself. (2004 was the year of her incarceration for securities fraud.) In all honesty, I'm not sure how many Martha Stewart Memos I wrote, and I can't remember what Memo # 1 addressed. If I ever find it and deem it worthy, I will post it here.

What follows, then, is my e-mail from eight-plus years ago, with only a few very minor revisions. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

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It always amazes me how many people do not know how to use butter. As the Martha surrogate, and to save you from embarrassing yourselves, I am providing to you the following guidelines:

1. Never reach for the butter, unless you are the closest person at the table to the butter. Ask the closest person to pass it.

2. If someone else has asked that the butter be passed to her, but the butter has to get by you first, ask the requesting person if she minds if you help yourself first before passing it on to the requester. Don't shortstop it without permission. This rule generally applies to each thing (not just butter) which is passed at the table.

3. Check around your place at the table to see if your hostess has provided you with a butter knife. If yes, use it.

4. If there is room at your place at the table, put the butter serving plate down on the table before you slice into the butter. Unless you are an axe murderer (or you are auditioning for the Anthony Perkins role in a remake of Psycho), do not hold the butter serving plate with one hand while you slice with the other hand.

5. You only get one slice of butter, so make it a good one. It is better to err on the side of taking a little too much than it is to take more than one slice. Pity the person who has to use the butter after you've mangled the stick like Paul Bunyan going after a tree.

6. Slice straight down on the butter stick. Only a hillbilly would skim the knife over the top of the butter stick. If you insist on doing so and you are my relative, please do me the favor of forbearing until you legally change your last name.

7. Put your one slice of butter on the individual butter plate (see # 8). Do not apply it directly from the butter serving plate to your bread, or whatever else it is that you are buttering. (As used in this memo, "bread" refers to rolls, buns, croissants and muffins too.)

8. Check around your place at the table to see if the hostess has provided you with an individual butter plate. If yes, use it. If not, use your dinner plate. Do not put the bread on the table.

9. Before you apply the butter to your bread, break the bread in half with your freshly washed hands. Do not use a knife to break the bread. Do not apply the butter to unbroken bread. Exception: If the bread being passed around consists of a loaf, and a knife is supplied with the loaf, you may use the knife to cut yourself a slice.

10. When you are buttering your bread, the bread should be resting on your individual butter plate. You should not be holding the bread in the air. You are not a priest, and this is not the consecration.

11. Put enough butter on your bread to be able to taste the butter, but remember: Buttering a slice of bread is not like painting a wall. You don't have to cover every square millimeter of surface area.

12. If you have an individual butter plate (see # 8), return the butter knife to that plate, not to your dinner plate.

13. After you take each bite of bread, put the uneaten remainder back on your individual butter plate. Don't hold onto the bread as if you were worried someone might steal it. Caveat: If you are seated next to a certain relative who has been know to accuse others of stealing (and therefore may be tempted to steal your bread as a reprisal), you would be well advised to keep an eye out for your uneaten remainder.

14. Keep in mind that no matter what the butter apologists try to tell you, generally speaking butter is not all that good for your body, even if it is the renowned Hope Butter. (Bread probably isn't either.) Many dieticians suggest that you try getting used to eating bread (and other types of food) without butter. Try it that way for several meals, and if you can get used to it you will be so much better off. Enjoying bread and other food without butter is an acquired taste (like coffee or vegetables). Give it a shot and then, if you must, try using a fraction of the butter you were using before.

15. This last rule is the most important of them all, and accordingly I have named it after my father, The Marquis. The Donald J. Periolat Rule: When you are passing a stick of butter to someone, try not to jam the end of the butter stick into the recipient's extended thumb. It may be funny, but it's still uncouth and very bad form.

The Two Question Rule

If you check back on my introductory post from December 6 ("Following David Brinkley's Lead"), you'll notice that nowhere in the list of subjects that I planned to cover in The Quentin Chronicle was "advice on the opposite sex." Even though I have been married for thirty-six years and raised two daughters, I am virtually unqualified because I make no pretense about being able to understand women. (My son can vouch for me, because even though I have not been shy about giving him advice, it has rarely, if ever, been about those of the female persuasion.) My feeling is that, if you ever meet a male who makes a contrary claim, take what he says with a grain of salt! Nevertheless, a couple of months ago I read a piece in an advice column - - it might have been Amy Dickinson's column "Ask Amy," and although I don't know for sure I am going to go with that assumption - - that was so downright excellent that I wished I had written it myself. The piece was not actually directly relevant to love life advice; instead it was about manners. However, after reading the column I was reminded about the one piece of advice on the subject of romance that I would have been willing to offer had I ever been asked. I have yet to be asked, but that's what blogs are for. You can answer questions that have never been asked of you!

In the particular "Ask Amy" column to which I refer, her readers contributed advice which they, themselves, had been given in their youth, and which they now imparted to their own children. A woman wrote to share a bit of instruction which her mother had told her and her siblings. The instruction was as follows: If you are conversing with a person who says something that reminds you of one of your own experiences (whether similar or dissimilar), you should first make every effort to ask three questions about what that person had to say. For example, if Lucy says to Ethel that she has just returned from a trip to South Dakota, Ethel should not reply, "I have never been to South Dakota, but I have been to North Dakota," nor should Ethel say, "I was there in 2006 and just loved it." Instead, Ethel should ask, "Did you see Mount Rushmore?" or "How long were you there?" In other words, let the person who instigates the telling of the personal story have her moment in the sun before you highjack the conversation with recollections of your own experience.

To be honest, I think three questions might be a little much, but please, no less than one, and preferably two! I am going to call it the "Two Question Rule." Once you have paid your acquaintance that little courtesy, then you can regale her with your own tale. Of course, it's easier said than done to execute that little courtesy, and it's also tough to restrain yourself if the conversation includes a third person who is not a follower of "Ask Amy" and decides to launch into her own story. It is behavior like that which probably led to the saying, "It's not always about you!"

My personal experience with conversation high jackers probably peaked when our kids were in school. What parent does not want to talk about his own kid? Mr. Jones: "My little Georgie hit two home runs in his T-ball game last night." Mr. Smith: "That's just great! My little Annie scored three goals in her soccer game!" No doubt I was guilty myself of failing to observe the Two Question Rule, but hopefully not more than a handful of times. I guess my excuse is that I had not yet read the Ask Amy column. Kudos to Amy's reader who shared her mother's wisdom. I wish I had that in my (too often used) bag of fatherly tips when my kids were little. It was more worthwhile than a lot of my other pearls of wisdom. But two of my kids follow this blog, so better late than never!

Now, you may now be asking, "What does the Two Question Rule have to do with anyone's love life?" Okay, what follows here is the tie-in, as tenuous as it might be.

From what I have read and observed over the years, a lot of younger people on the dating scene wonder if the person they are seeing is The One. I would advise such a person to pay attention to follow-up questions (or lack thereof) asked of them by their significant other, especially after the lapse of a day or more. The situations which are ripe for follow-ups involve mentioning some event which will occur (or remain in place) the next day, or at least in the very near future. A guy tells a girl that he's going to be studying hard that night for a test the next day, or that he's interviewing for a job tomorrow, or that his out-of-town cousin is coming for a visit. If, the next time they talk, the girl never asks about the test, or the interview or the visit, she is not The One. A girl tells a guy that she's almost done with a great book she's been reading, or that she is writing a speech, or that her mother is sick. If, the next time they talk, the guy never asks about the book, or the speech or the mom, he is not The One. If a person is interested in you, she will ask that follow-up question.

A person's failure to ask the follow-up doesn't make her a bad person. Maybe she is forgetful. Maybe there are so many other guys in the picture that she can't keep straight who told her what. Or, unfortunately, maybe it's just a case of poor etiquette. Obviously my little strategy will not reveal to you who is The One. Entire books could be written, and have been written, about that difficult query. But my strategy will be useful in determining who is not The One. If you see a pattern developing where your significant other consistently fails, time and again, to ask you that longed-for (or at least, anticipated) follow-up, it may be time to recognize that as a red flag. Let's face it, there are plenty of narcissists out there. Why waste your time with one?

How can you be a better conversationalist? How can you be a better mate? One imperative sentence provides the answer to both: Ask follow-up questions. It will show that you've been listening. It will show that you are interested, or at least that you have good manners.