derien | /me is a dork, or why working where I do is like being back in high school. (Reply)

At the airport I work at there's a flight of steps where you come down into the building, and everywhere else they have ramps, but at the first entrance they have a small wheelchair lift, instead. Only, it doesn't seem to work. The other day I saw a family play with it for a few seconds, then carry their daughter's wheelchair down the steps. Yesterday, the group of us working at Station One, the baggage screening station right in front of this little lift, began wondering about the lift, so CeeJay went to the top and pushed the call button to see if the lift would rise. It did not.

"See if you can get it to work from inside," he said to me. "Shut the door. Now, push the 'up.'"

Here's me, inside, getting a little panicky as I realize there's no handle on the inside of the door, and I looked, saw something that said 'up,' next to a big red button, and even as the little voice in the back of my head said 'never push a big red button!' I pushed it.

LOUD RINGING NOISE!

I jumped, and probably waived my hands like the robot from Lost In Space. Certainly everyone at the station was practically doubled over laughing at me.

"Now pull the button out," CeeJay continues - very calm, as if that's a perfectly normal part of the process. "Now push the thing that says 'up.'" The 'up' was right next to the big red button, and it was a kind of flat rocker-switch thing, which I hadn't initially recognized as being a control at all.

So, I went to the top, and we determined that the lift is only controllable from inside and not callable from outside, so that it can only be used once and then has to be reset, apparently, if anyone else coming in is to use it. Which is pretty inefficient, but we'll probably get yelled at and told not to play with things if we report it.

And of course, like siblings, my co-workers didn't let it go. When S. The Cop came by a minute later, doing her rounds, they started teasing me, "She's coming to put the cuffs on you! That alarm goes straight to the police station!" (I sidled to the front of the station and smiled at her, shyly, because, well, that's what I always do when I see her. Wouldn't want to act different, now, would we? That would be suspicious.)

A little while after that, when I was helping the station lead with her paperwork (because she's seldom been a station lead), someone said, "Hey, Securitas is here to speak to you," and I looked up to see one of the guys from the security company who keeps cars away from the curb out front, looking big. Of course they had put him up to it. I'll be surprised if this doesn't provide amusement for the next several weeks.