Trapped in Elevator for 40 hours w/ Video

[UD_Delt]

I cannot imagine how much this would suck...

http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/2008/04/21/080421_elevators

Edit:
Heres the link to the story: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten

[Yegolev]

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

[cmlancas]

But how long is the DS battery?

 

[Yegolev]

Oh shit.

[cmlancas]

No, seriously, how long is it? I usually have mine charging in the bathroom, so I don't think I've ever timed the length of the battery life.

[Yegolev]

It's not fucking forty hours.

[Aez]

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

[Tale]

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.

edit - ah, I read the following in the article, which comes after he pressed the emergency button and rang the alarm constantly:

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.

[bhodi]

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.

Yeah, but that's his fault. He tried to milk the system:

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.

[naum]

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

Or your cellphone.

[Yegolev]

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

Or your cellphone.

I do, always, but not for that reason.

[lac]

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

So did he apparently.

[Righ]

The video page dates from April 21st 2008. Spooky.

[Merusk]

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

You can get out, but you REALLLY don't want to do that.  An elevator is a machine, and you don't want to be crawling around inside the guts of a broken one that might spring to life at any moment.

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.

It's been my experience that a LOT of those phone panels are empty or have otherwise broken phones.  I'm curious and I check 'em out often in new buildings. The problem with that is, sometimes you get one that alerts the monitor that the phone was opened and the security desk comes across the intercom to see if there's anything wrong.

[murdoc]

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

[bhodi]

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

I didn't know they were disabled by default. I did notice a majority of them were "broken" every time I tried to use them, though.

[Righ]

I like the fact that Schindler are the second largest supplier of elevators in the world. In Britain, we call them lifts. Those would be Schindler's Lifts then.

[DeathInABottle]

Brilliant article.  Anyone else think of Foucault, or am I the only cultural theory nerd here?

[Mr_PeaCH]

From the phrasing of the Subject line I envisioned the torture of being trapped in an elevator with one of those captive-audience video monitors spewing advertisements and weather and traffic reports for 40 hours.  I'm not so sure that wouldn't be worse.