I am reading a novel about elevator inspectors. I don’t really like riding in elevators. I would take the stairs if it weren’t for the fact that my building’s staircase is used only as a fire escape. Last week there was a story in the news about some guy who was beheaded when he became stuck in closing elevator doors. You see, those sensors don’t always work. Don’t trust them, don’t stick body parts in there if the doors continue to slide closed.

The reason I was thinking about all this is that Friday night, one of the elevator doors in my building failed. A co-worker and I got into an elevator to head down to the first floor. We stood there a minute and noticed the doors weren’t closing. I hit “door close,” nothing happened. Feeling uneasy, I went back out into the lobby and suggested the same to my co-worker.

She stayed in there and started waving her arm around between the doors. The doors began to close, she kept waving her arm. I said “don’t do that…” But she left her arm there, which to me seems really, really stupid. Finally the doors closed on her arm. I think she then FINALLY decided to press the “door open” button and remove her limb. And finally exited the obviously malfunctioning box.

I told her, “people get killed doing that,” and she just kind of laughed like that was impossible, so I told her how a guy in Houston was decapitated last week when the doors failed.

On my way to the train, I kept having this horrible mental image of her arm trapped there, and what would have happened if the elevator had begun to descend, and she couldn’t free herself.

Don’t always trust machines; they break.