Waiting for the Elevator

One of the joys of living in a 28 story building on the 20th floor is that a ride in an elevator is one of my daily activities. Only one small problem: Riding on the the elevator is a daily routine for everyone else in the building. So on occasion, I have to wait for the elevator to take me up or down. The matter is even more complicated in that the two elevators are not linked together, so I have to push the down arrow on both elevators in order to not guess which one will appear fastest. The button stays pushed until the elevator comes to the floor. So if I push both buttons, and one elevator comes I get on. But there is no way to cancel the other elevator's button, so the elevator thinks someone is still waiting for a ride and makes its appearance on the same floor.

This has been the routine each time we are heading up or down. We have become better at guessing which elevator will arrive first, so often we can only push one button.

Now for this morning. I was heading to the office to do some work and was trying to get a ride down. One problem: the workers were collecting trash from each floor and were occupying both elevators. That's not much of a big deal, except for the fact that they were stopping at every floor to get the trash. I had to patiently watch the elevator indicator proceed from 28th floor, floor-by-floor, to the 20th floor where I live. But once I got on the elevator, the ride to the bottom was fast.

It is a good thing that nobody lives on the first 19 floors of the building so there was no trash to pick up!