When in emergency

When running short of ideas or the enthusiasm to begin something afresh, borrow! So I shall resort to that most convenient of options and talk about one of those funny moments which enliven the proceedings of a 9 to 5 day job for a day or two just by the thought of having been there, and revelled  in the humour that was in the air. It was such an evident thing that in retrospect we were all surprised that it didn't strike us earlier!

The building in which my office is housed is all of 18 floors and has a healthy mix of different companies taking groups of floors. Consequently the 12 elevators in the building (10 if you consider that at least two of them are always under maintenance at any given time) serve the needs of a huge number of people and a few half-minutes/minutes of patient wait for the lift to show up are a given. By the time the lift does show up, there are only two moods possible, joviality on the faces of those who were not in such a big hurry and used the interval to take a crack or two at their bosses' eccentricities, or obvious grumpiness on those faces who had piles of unfinished, behind schedule work waiting for them. It was to the former group that the two guys laughing their hearts out at some inside joke belonged to as they hopped into the lift from the 3rd floor parking joining the rest of us already in there. Then they couldn't stop laughing as their pleasant mood brought to their notice a sticker which had been pasted inside all the lifts since they had put into operation.

The sticker says "In case of emergency, please dial toll free number 1-800-XYZ-ABC". The question which one of the merry guys posed out aloud was simple and very pertinent. Hundreds of trips on those lifts by hundreds of people, yet no one had ever thought about it. The question which sent a rumble of loud laughter through all those present in the lift including me, taking their mind off work temporarily was "Which genius trapped inside a lift would really care if the rescue number was a TOLL FREE number or not, in case there was an actual emergency?" No one perhaps, except the genius who gave the instructions to print such instructions!!!