Upstairs, Downstairs
Last night I was leaving my apartment to go to the gym. I hit the elevator button and watched the elevator go past my floor to the penthouse. I don't like the old woman who lives upstairs, so I hoped that she was getting off and not on and waited for it to come back down to me. But instead of stopping, it went straight down to the lobby. Annoyed, I hit the button again and watched as again the elevator went past me to the penthouse. It then went past me to return to the lobby.
Figuring there was a malfunction with the button on my floor, I walked down one flight and tried from there. Again, the elevator went past me to the top, then past me to the bottom. Not wanting to walk all the way down from the 17th floor (or more likely just looking for an excuse not to work out), I gave up and went back to watching TV on my couch.
A few minutes later, my roommate returned from a day of snowboarding. He also had no luck with the elevator, which was stuck on a continuous loop. No luck with the service elevator either, which was also out of order. So he had to trudge up to our apartment on the 17th floor, snowboard in tow. And then realized that he would not be able to order any food for dinner, as the delivery people would not climb up to us for a mere $2 tip. I'm glad I didn't tough it out and actually make the trip to the gym. I would've missed out on his seemingly endless wheezing and complaining.
I hope that none of my neighbors were stuck in the elevator during its relentless up-and-down. Although I wonder which would be worse: being stuck in an unmoving elevator, or stuck in an unstoppable elevator?

P.S. The title of my post has reminded me of one of my favorite Sesame Street sketches of all time... the parody of Masterpiece Theater's "Upstairs, Downstairs" in which Grover simply runs to the top of the stairs, says "upstairs," then runs to the bottom and says "downstairs." And repeats. Over, and over, and over. Now that's humor.