f13.net

The most striking thing to him about the tape is that it includes split-screen footage from three other elevators, on which you can see men intermittently performing maintenance work. Apparently, they never wondered about the one he was in. (Eight McGraw-Hill security guards came and went while he was stranded there; nobody seems to have noticed him on the monitor.)

Also his colleague who he had told "I'm just going out for a smoke, back soon" just presumed he had skipped work, and left an angry note taped to his monitor. Didn't even bother looking for him. He lost his job, got minimal compensation, lost his apartment and is still unemployed.

He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.

Makes me want to keep my DS in my pocket all the time.

Or your cellphone.

I always tought you could escape by the roof of an elevator.  I blame Die Hard.

I always tought you could escape by the roof of an elevator.  I blame Die Hard.

Normally there's an emergency phone or at least an emergency button to press if you get stuck in an elevator. But the panels of that one seem scarily blank.

I liked the fact that the CLOSE button doesn't do anything. That made me chuckle.