Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Anyone for a round of catch the elevator?

Typically, when you catch the elevator, it's to get in it and have it take you to another floor.

We have a new game in my condominium apartment building. We catch the elevator and lock it off, so it won't go anywhere.

This is due to the recent fire in our elevator room. See my blog entry on that!

We now have one of two elevators kinda working. It takes pressing many buttons, seemingly almost at random, to summon the elevator, and then there may be floor numbers lit up at random inside the elevator... but it will (likely) get you to the floor you want. And we only have a temporary license to operate it, so we are working on replacing the controls as soon as we can. But it beats using the stairs.

One of the functions of an elevator is to return to the ground floor, open the doors and turn itself off whenever the fire alarm goes off. Our elevator will not do this anymore. The fire department is not happy, but the temporary license lets us still use the elevator, and we have a couple of dozen warning signs telling people not to use the elevator if the alarm sounds.

But we're not relying on people to read signs if the alarm sounds, that's where the "catch the elevator" game starts. Each member of the Strata Council has a key that can be used to turn the elevator off if the alarm sounds. We're all on different floors.

So if the alarm goes off, we all try to summon the elevator to catch it and lock it off!

And then we run downstairs, and the one who caught it gets bragging rights.

Actually, the one who caught it then has to tell everyone, including the arriving firemen, where the elevator is.

It sounds like it could be a fun game, but we all still hope we don't have to play it!

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