Brain Wave

Yesterday, Sunday, I was scheduled to work (oh well, as my optha puts it "ah, those pagan people!’).

I got to our building early and luckily bumped in to one of my coleagues who also was about to go in. Together, we rode the elevator which was still going down basement 3. When it went back up the lower ground, it opened to our other coleague. So we were now three inside the elevator, quite boisterously chatting with each other. The monitor already was displaying the floors it was passing through. Suddenly, the door opened and we were back at the lower ground. We were so shocked since the only floor we pressed was 27th and we were the only ones in there — it’s impossible!

We were quite alarmed by what happened but we just closed the doors and pressed 27th floor again — pretended nothing happened. But one of my 2 coleagues was already panic-stricken, the other one was just laughing it out, as for me, it just bothered me a bit… a bit lang… hehe!

When we’re about to reach 27th floor my panic-stricken officemate blurted out loud "ah basta bababa na ko sa 27th!" It was like a cue for the elevator! It suddenly stopped, the lights went out, and the door did’t open. OMG!!! We were stuck inside!!! Wahhhhh!!!! I could never believe it was happening!!!!

So there, we started shouting! The fact that we were up there hanging, plus the darkness scared me — we had no idea what was going on — we were secluded. I tried to press the alarm on the left side but it was defective. We were screaming, laughing… One of my officemates pressed the alarm on the right side — and there, one of the operators responded. We started screaming "Kuya na-stuck kami!!!", "Anung nangyari?!" , "waaahhhh", etc….. and they responded in a quite frightening voice "Ma’am, nag-shutdown lang po!" When we heard that, the more we panicked. SHUTDOWN??! What do you mean SHUTDOWN?! Does this mean there’s a possibility the elevator would fall down (they say our building is well known for such incident)?!?!

Probably irked by our earsplitting voices, the operator screamed, “Ma’am, wag po kayong mag-panic!! Wag po mag-panic!” Like hello?!?! Kung yan ang nauna mong sinabi at hindi “nag-shutdown!” in a quite frightful voice, we would have not panicked that much NOH!!!! Haler?!!?

It was hot as hell inside. The incident lasted for about 10 mins or more. There were exchange of knocks between us and our company guards and our seniors making sure we were okay.

Then the lights opened. In a matter of seconds, the doors opened. I was relieved to see quite a number of our staff and seniors waiting for us to come out the elevator.

Whew! What an experience!

Lessons learned: Stay alert anytime and anywhere, and choose your words…ALL THE TIME! Wag gumaya kay manong operator! I-shutdown ko siya dyan eh! If you can’t say anything good, just SHUT your mouth! Less talk, less injury!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.