Elevators

One of the most difficult aspects of being a property manager was receiving full blame when anything went wrong in the building. In cases where the hot water wasn’t running, or the lobby ceiling was leaking, I tried to remind the tenants that there is currently a global war on terror, and at least they weren’t overseas.

Besides water and sewage problems, the building’s elevators were constantly malfunctioning. Maintaining these two moving karts became a primary source of frustration in my life, not only because it caused a safety hazard, but because this problem gave tenants an actual reason to complain. I had to suck it up and absorb it like a sponge.

Sarah, from apartment 209 was one of the tenants who decided to yell at me when she found out the elevators were not working: “Allison, the elevators shake a lot when I’m in them, and it’s making me nauseous. Can’t you just flip a switch or something?!”

I was especially mad that Sarah had been pissy with me about the elevators since I listened to her whine about her ex boyfriend for forty five minutes only two days prior. Apparently her ex has an erectile dysfunction and continues to take out his insecurities on her. Sarah explained that she made a mistake letting him treat her with such “horror” for so long. She also made the mistake of thinking that therapy was one of the buildings’ amenities.

“Sarah, I will make sure this issue is fixed ASAP.” I then picked up the phone acting like I was calling our elevator contractors so she would leave my office. As Sarah left, I decided to test the elevators and write down what exactly was going on so I could report it to our contractors. I found out that not only was the elevator kart bouncing up and down, but the elevator doors shut so abruptly, I was almost killed… or almost the victim of acute bruising. As I jumped feverishly out of the elevator, I realized that there were three tenants waiting in the lobby for the elevator. After they saw me, they opted to use the stairs.

I took my pad of paper with my bullet points, and went back to my office to call our elevator contractors. I had to practice sounding serious on the phone before I actually dialed their number since our “elevator guys” were like a strange rat pack with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. Whenever I would tell their team about a problem, they would say “Don’t worry babe, I’ll fix this problem. You get back to typing,” and hang up before I could say anything back; even before they told me what time they would arrive. Once they did arrive, they would play around with some wires for ten minutes, and always leave laughing as if they were retelling stories of the “good ‘ole elevator days.” They’d stop by my office, wink at and me and say that they did “everything they could” but the problem could not be “completely fixed.”

I finally gathered the confidence to call Billy, Jo and Tom, our elevator rat pack:

“Hi guys, this is Allison again. Our elevator door is closing so hard that it shakes the building. It also almost shut on top of me, potentially crushing my body. Now everyone is scared to use them.

Elevator guy: “Yeaaa, see the elevators at your building have a special technology that is really outdated, so we can never “fully” fix them because your company has really old elevator technological……..technology.”

Me: “They were built last year.”

Elevator guy: “Riiiiiiight, ok I’ll send someone over to fix it”

That evening, I wrote a memo to the whole building:

“Hello all:

Unfortunately our elevators are malfunctioning again. Please do NOT use them unless you want you and your family to be crushed like a mosquito on a windshield. Thank you for your cooperation.”