Hello gentle reader.  I am writing to you today from loverly Baltimore City, crack cocaine capital of the world.  My current audit assignment has me working in one of the main government office buildings in downtown Ballmer.  The building itself is fine, a normal government office building.  Droves of drones (I mean government employees) lurching their way off the totally useless Ballmer subway across the street, shuffling past the newspaper guy hawking the same stories you read on the Internet for free while you’re pretending to work, and filing into this bleak grey poorly lit monstrosity that apparently passes for an OSHA approved work environment.  I mention poorly lit because every time I walk out of this building, I feel like Moley the Mole Person squinting at the bright yellow explosion in the sky that I have forgotten exists over the past 8 ½ hours under the pathetic fluorescents that work just about as hard as everything else here.  The guard at the front desk will sometimes ask to see your ID badge, but mostly won’t.  That’s ok, I don’t voluntarily look at this picture of the pumpkin noggin either.  The cafeteria on the first floor sells salad for approximately $98 a pound.  And the garbanzo beans and cucumbers are pretty mushy by the time I get there.  You must buy coffee across the street because that coffee shop has proven its respectability by providing hot sleeves for the cups instead of forcing you to pour your cup o’ joe into environment-murdering Styrofoam.  That is unless you are feeling particularly brave or have a drug deal to make and take the totally useless Ballmer subway to Lexington Market where they sell the best coffee I have ever had in my life.  Peanuts, hot dogs and coffee they sell at this place…I don’t know why it’s so good and I don’t want to know.  It just is…but I never go there.  I go across the street, with all the other lemmings.  Naturally working in a bustling hub of government activity has me all in a tizzy over the myriad government employee species I have managed to catalogue thus far, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.  Today we’re talking about elevator etiquette.  And why it is so important. 

I am going to give you a safe estimate and say that I spend about 78% of my time every day either waiting for an elevator or on an elevator.  This building has fifteen floors and I don’t think all of the elevators work….I am pretty sure there must be at least one of them that I’ve never been on in my decade of working in Audit-Land.  Here is etiquette rule number one – the first person to the Hall of Elevators must press the go***mn button.  Press a button.  I don’t care if you’re going up or down, just press the friggin button so I don’t think you’re Creepy McCreep-a-lot standing there waiting to see where I am going before you decide or hoping the doors will magically pop open cause you thought about it real hard.  I work on the twelfth floor of this building, so I am always on my way up.  I walked in the other day and there he was – Creepy McCreep-a-lot just standing there, staring up at the ceiling obviously concentrating really hard.  Of course I pressed the button after huffing my little self-righteous sigh in his general direction.  And of course he got on the up elevator that I got on.  Creepy.  Just standing there.  Like a creep.

Rule number two – wait exactly eight seconds for people to catch the elevator before you let the doors close.  No more.  And no less.  If you can hear me running…well running might be an exaggeration….but if you can hear me walking extra fast in my ankle breaking heels then hold the stupid f***ing elevator door you huge jerk.  HOLD IT.  Who knows when the next elevator will come?  It could be days I’m waiting down here, you don’t know.  But eight seconds, that’s it.  Don’t be holding the doors open for slightly longer than forever, pretending to be nice when we all know well and good that the only reason you are testing the maximum weight capacity of this lift is because you have no desire to get to your floor and actually work.  There is nothing worse than being sardined into an elevator with strange government employee types and then having to shoulder your way off when you get to your floor.  Nothing worse.  Luckily most everyone is off by the time we get to 12.  But come on.  Let’s not get crazy with the holding elevators nonsense.  Here’s a good rule of thumb – imagine how many people you could comfortably co-exist with in this five-five moving death trap assuming it gets stuck before it reaches your destination….once that many people are on the elevator, or the allowed eight seconds has elapsed, let it go.  Just let it go.

Rule number three – don’t keep pressing the same buttons over and over.  The elevator doesn’t move any faster if you keep pressing the same buttons.  It doesn’t go into warp drive.  It doesn’t pass through the space-time continuum to skip floors.  Press it once.  Then LEAVE IT ALONE!  You Button Pressers are probably the people who short out the circuit boards and cause us to get stuck.  You Button Pressers and your unbelievably annoying need to continuously press the same stupid button are obviously the people that crack the cover to the buttons or cause the buttons to not light up when you press them and then nobody knows where the stupid elevator is going to stop.  Jamming your thumbs on the buttons like you’re trying to gouge out someone’s eyes is probably a little overkill.  Doing it repeatedly makes me think you’re a psychopath.  Leave it alone.  We all don’t need to be reminded after every floor which floor you are going to.  We know.  Just leave it alone.  Also, please…..please stop pressing the Close button.  The Close button is a myth.  The sadistic elevator designers put it there because they know that control freaks like you need the illusion that you can actually close the doors.  After all….you can open the doors and that button clearly works.  So you should be able to close the doors.  But you can’t.  That button does not….I repeat does NOT make the doors close any faster than they normally would.  The sadistic elevator designer is mocking you control freak.  I’m sure there is a complicated sequence of buttons (probably hitting the close button 37 times in a row) that completely shuts down the elevator.  So cut it out.  We’ll get there.  Stop taking out your road/computer/work rage on the friggin buttons.  We’ll get there.

Rule number four – please pay attention to the normal civilized society proximity rules when standing in an elevator.  Don’t be all up in my grill.  The elevator is plenty big enough for the two of us….and if I stand to this side then you better get as far from me as is physically possible.  I mean it.  If there are three people on the elevator and one of them gets off….don’t continue to stand behind me.  It makes me paranoid and you’re a jerk.  Pay attention!  Get the hell to the other side of the elevator and stop being a jerk.  You make me self-conscious when you stand too close to me or behind me….for no good reason.  If you touch me in an elevator when we are not sardined in there, I don’t care if it was an accident, but if you touch me I will beat you senseless with my lethal Audit-Land coffee mug.  That’s oogey….normal human beings from the planet Earth need their space and we need our meditation time.  If I cannot ride peacefully on an elevator preparing myself for the next inevitable disaster or crisis Audit-Land throws at me because I have to keep my eye on you the whole time, I will be really really annoyed.  So back it up.  Just back it up.

Rule number five – unless you have a very obvious physical impediment, stop taking the elevator one floor.  Seriously.  We are the Land of the Lazy.  I know life’s got you down.  I know your job sucks and you feel worthless.  But stop taking the elevator one stupid floor.  It mucks everything up for the rest of us….you know you’ve looked at someone going one floor up and thought, lazy fat ass.  Yeah, me too, that’s what I think.  I’m not saying you need to be a marathon stair stepper, but anyone can walk up one flight of stairs without giving themselves a coronary.  Why don’t you give it a try?  And going down one floor?  I want to kick those people.  Just kick ‘em right in the shins…..you seriously can’t walk down one flight of stairs!?!?!  What is that about?  Gravity is helping you!  You could fall down one flight of stairs with no effort at all and probably still be ok.  Taking the elevator down one floor, sheeeeeeeeeeeesh….<shaking my head>…..start appreciating your legs a little more people.  Start appreciating the fact that they get you places, that they move at all.  Take care of your muscles and they will take care of you.  God gave you this body to love and exercise, like a dog….stop treating it like s**t.  One step, that’s it.  Take the friggin stairs.

Rule number six – please press the right button when you get on an elevator.  You only get one chance.  If you change your mind or realize you hit the wrong button, it’s TOO LATE.  You’re committed.  You’ve committed the rest of us to stopping at that floor, so by golly, you’re gonna stop at that floor now too and you’re going to get off the stupid elevator and deal with the consequences of your rushed hurried decision to hit the wrong friggin button.  I know which button you pressed, don't act like you didn't.  I was paying attention.  <hiss>  I will push you right off this elevator...I'm the person that leans forward and says "Five, this is five!" right in your face because I know you hit that button and now you're gonna get off here.  And keep your demon children away from the buttons.  Elevator buttons attract greasy messy kid fingers like bugs to a bug zapper.  Keep them away.  And press the right button.

Rule number seven – talk on an elevator like you would talk in church.  I don’t want to hear about the awesome sex you had last night, how late you are on your credit card payments or any other ridiculously personal piece of info you feel like sharing with complete and total strangers who still have to see you in this building every day.  If you’re talking on the phone while you’re in an elevator, please don’t forget you’re talking on a phone.  Even though you might feel like you’re having a private conversation, you’re not.  We can still hear you.  The imaginary invisible bubble that the cell phone company promised you is a sham.  We’re all involved now.  Go easy on us.  Don’t shout.  We are in a small confined space, and shouting makes me panic.  If you’re having a conversation with somebody else on the elevator, go easy on us.  No jokes about blowing up the building, no longwinded profane rants about how you can’t afford to retire and please….if your conversational buddy is not getting off on the same floor as you are, don’t ever hold the door so you can continue your conversation.  I will karate chop you in the elbow and let loose a roundhouse kick to the chest that you will not forget any time soon.  I know it feels like you’re in Me-World…but you’re not….you’re in Us-World and you need to be nice to all of Us.  Selfish jerks.  If you really want to be nice, just shut the heck up.  Silence on an elevator is fantastic.  I cannot stand trying to be social with people on an elevator…it’s like a pop quiz…QUICK think of something not stupid to say.  Not fair, you selfish jerks.  Just shut up.

Ok, let’s recap class.  1. Press a button.  2. Just let it go.  3. We’ll get there.  4. Just back it up.  5. Take the stairs.  6. Pay attention.  7. Just shut up.  Follow these simple rules, easy even for a blind, deaf and half-retarded dog to understand.  So you should be good and Audit-Land will be a happier place.  Because I’ll be happy.  Thanks for listening…you selfish jerks.

Later gators,

Heather