Have you ever been in a high rise and looked at the elevator with horror? Often time’s students nervously grip the walls waiting for their floor to finally arrive. But the common quip about the elevators mechanical problems is because of their now defunct manufacturer, but is this theory really true?
On March 15th, researchers from Germany, with way too much free time on their hands, set out to Hempstead, NY to solve this age old mystery. The two chubby self-proclaimed “elevator enthusiasts” had this to say “Oh, yah, we are really excited to get to the bottom of this issue, Franz and I literally have been out of work for years, so we decided to get out a map of America, a couple darts, close our eyes and see where the dart landed and flew down to Hempstead immediately.”
What Franz and Hanz set to find out were the issues behind the elevator breakdowns: were they mental? Physical? Both? The two men wanted to get down to the deep-rooted issues, so they staged a 5-day investigation. They set up psychiatrist’s couches and winged-back leather chairs and went into a dizzying frenzy of soul-searching questioning. When Hanz emerged from the elevator after Day 1 he was so thoroughly frustrated by the lack of communication from the elevator that he emphatically exclaimed “That shit cray.”
But after awhile the elevator started opening up. On Day 3 it sputtered, went up to the third floor and lit up all of its buttons, leading the researchers to believe that the elevator was suffering a mental-breakdown. By the end of the 5-day investigation, the two men finally came up with a theory: The elevator wasn’t dilapidated, just lonely.
At a press conference the next day the Enterprise elevator had this to say:
“ I’ve read the summary of the research these two men have done and I think they have came up with a brilliant epiphany. Everyday people come on and take a ride on me, but 20 seconds later, they’re gone, I feel used. No one ever asks me to come eat with them, no one asks me how I’m feeling, so the only moments where I get to spend time with people and get to know them is when I become “stuck.” Call me selfish or crazy, but deep down in side of me there’s a little boy crying oil.”
After this discovery, many Hofstra students started taking the elevator’s words and acting upon them. Weeks after, elevators from every tower on campus were seen playing Frisbee on the quad and eating dinner in the Student Center with their human counterparts. “I thought I’d never see the day where man and machine would be able to sit side-by-side and break bread together, it makes all my buttons light up on the inside.”
So as you go onto an elevator in the future, take this story with a sense of caution and realize that elevators have feelings too. Whenever you’re turning on your car, pouring your morning coffee or just texting on your cell phone, take heed to the amount of neglect you’re projecting, with neglect comes emotional baggage and low self-esteem. So next time you go to hit your computer that’s loading illegal movies too slowly, stop yourself and remember the words of that brave Hofstra elevator.
