The Elevator

I'll be celebrating my 9 years in the call center industry this year and  for the most part I am very pleased with the experience. I've endured a P12k base salary when I started, night shifts, political uprisings in the workplace, personal resignations, 7 different CEOs, earthquakes, mega-typhoons and the yearly news that the company will shut down, and ehem, soon. All of that is nothing compared to the daily torture that I go through almost every day: the IBM Plaza elevator.

Ten Things I Hate About You:
10. The color green and light-brown palette of the elevator walls is not soothing to the eye. It's like you're in the forest with wilted trees about to die. Whoever did the redecoration needs to study basic color blocking. A ten year old could do much better using crayons!

9. The spray that hovers on the upper right corner, waiting to spew out its perfume-of-pungency, is not pleasant to the nasal cavities. That is an understatement. The smell is nauseating and is much more suited to a building in Quiapo than one in the supposed Cyber-city of Manila!

8. A reflective door is fine if the people occupying the front row are at least tolerable looking. With the current majority population of the building being the tech-savvy yet non-aesthetically pleasing (bordering on horrifying) folks from the special floors, I prefer matte, thank you. And that most of them don't seem to bathe daily, adds to the unpleasant experience tenfold. Perhaps the perfume spray in the elevator was made for them? Hmm...

7. There are three elevators in the main hall but for some unexplainable reason, only one or two are working at a time. Color-coding? Cost-cutting? Act of God? Please explain!

6. Because the demand for the elevator exceeds the supply, you would often see lines of people awaiting their turn to ride the box of discomfort. The queue you see even exceeds the amount of daily calls that certain accounts have per day. Sad. :)

5. The weight sensor is faulty, or non-existent. Irregardless if you have 25 people squeezed like sardines inside, the elevator will insist on opening and seemingly allow more people in. The catch: once the next person comes in, it will sound an alarm that the maximum capacity is reached and it won't move until someone steps out. Eeny-meeny-miny-mooh, you're out! Fun!

4. Talking about sensors and the lack thereof, I have witnessed at least 5 people get painfully squeezed between the doors while going in!  It's like the elevator is hungry for the masses! Well as long as it only eats the gaudy, non-Thompson people I'm fine. :)

3. Like a scene from a suspense flick, the elevator will sometimes stop mid-floor with half a wall and half an opening facing you. Just imagine that happening while you're alone, in the middle of the night ,with half a door of your reflection in front of you. And the other half...could be a reflection of someone else...

2. For ambiance, instead of music, people are treated to a series of frightening grinds and whirls to give you that unforgettable sensation that the elevator is about to crash. A free roller-coaster feeling every time you ride! Wheee!
It also makes you closer to God as you pray fervently each time you ride the elevator of doom!

1. And the single-most thing I  hate about this contraption: the speed. I swear, it's 2010 but I feel like the elevator was made in 1910, where people can leisurely wait for an hour while the business world goes on without them. To add insult to injury, it insists on stopping on all of the special floors of the tenant with the most number of levels in the building, even if no one is coming in or going out of that specific floor! Who do you think you are: %$$2@%!!!

My opinion: Impractical, technologically backwards and down-right shitty. There I said it!

Thankfully, we have the small scenic elevator at the back. If you don't mind the view...