An email to the department this morning, sent by one of my most loyal spies, seemed innocuous enough:
has anyone seen my mobile phone last left in Lift #2
In our particular ivory rather drab concrete tower our lifts are a source of constant amusement . Getting into one of them is rather like taking a taxi in Hong Kong , except much, much slower. As my spy elaborated:
This morning I got stuck in the lift on Level 7 (which considering I get both vertigo and claustrophobia made me a tad anxious). After contacting the emergency line, I discovered that the only way I could keep in touch with the outside world was to hold the phone up a little. Since I wanted to say some last goodbyes to loved ones (and members of my family), I hung the phone up on the knobs… On being rescued, I completely forgot about the phone
He’s obviously very worried that his SIM card is going to be used to control a burning jeep crashing into Glasgow Airport, or something (given the Australian Plod’s record , this fear is probably not unreasonable).
Poor chap. But wait, there was a followup message, from another lecturer in the department:
I also got stuck this morning, along with 2 micro students, on level 5.
I couldnt get a mobile signal at all.
(Stuck with two microbiology students? How terrible – Ed.)
We pressed the emergency phone button, which goes to the lift company, and were told the “problem would be dealt with by someone on the site”.
which I’m sure must have been very reassuring.
The good news is that we now have a new CoSHH procedure for lifts:
I found that i could use my car key to wedge the door open enough to let our fingers open it the rest of the way.
So there you go. I’m just glad for their sakes that there were no spiders in there, too.
I am only disappointed that the two micro students could not manage to extract themselves with adroit deployment of their platinum loops (which all micro students carry, by law, on their persons at all time. In a little holster.)
Talk about letting the side down.
It’s Australia, Jenny. There’s probably a law against it.
Are you sure “µStudents” doesn’t just mean undergrads?
I think we need to work on nanostudents. a) Clearly better funding potential in ‘nanobiobuzzword’ b) will cut down on space charges
If they were microstudents, couldn’t they have simply squeezed through a gap and gone to summon help?
Oh do keep up Henry, Cameron’s already leap-frogged that joke.
And of course the real benefit! Because the nanostudents are smaller they can use tiny inoculation loops. Therefore we save a fortune on the platinum!
Wrong blog. Damned Safari and its tabbed browsing.
Er …. picostudents? Femtostudents? Attostudents? Schleptostudents? Gotcher.
Imagine my surprise when I moved back to my current building after 2 years away and found that the problems with the BRAND NEW lifts had got WORSE since the building opened last time I worked here, and people were getting stuck all the time. My fear of getting trapped has been very good for my fitness (I’m on the 4th floor this time, 13th last time which was harder), but I really wish they’d have extended the staircase down to the basement where the bike storage and shower rooms are. I have no choice but to take the scary lifts twice a day.
Back when I did my DPhil there was a particularly scary lift in the concrete monstrosity they called the ‘New Building’ (it was Oxford; anything after the civil war is ‘new’). It had a proper concertina gate and everything, and used to clank and judder alarmingly (still does for all I knew).
Scared the willies out of me, but like an old Massey Ferguson it never, ever broke down.
My Mum likes to tell stories about the old Paternoster lift that was in service during her undergrad days at Newcastle University. Apparently if you stayed in all the way to the top you got a lovely view while the car moved sideways over the roof. Unfortunately my one foray into the modern languages building during my own time at Newcastle revealed the lifts to be defunct.
Ah! There used to be a Paternoster in Biochemistry at Oxford!
One of the tricks we used to play on fresh undergrads, nervous about getting on, was (while they watched from the ground floor) to ride the lift through the bottom and come back — upside down.
You’d perform the handstand while out of sight. Priceless.
That’s just evil. Hilarious though!
You should have seen the look on their terrified little faces!
There was a paternoster in the main lecture-hall building at Leeds, too. Ah, the fun, the excitement, the screams of terror, the crunching of broken bones, the blood running down the walls. Happy days.
and that was just the kittens, yes?
Well, sort of. It was the cute microstudents holding the kittens.
They stopped the Roger Stevens (in Leeds) paternoster when I was there. I’m claiming plausible deniability.
Henry’s explanation does explain why the main corridor there is called red route.
@Bob – all the best people went to Leeds, didn’t they?
… and subsequently left as quickly as they could.
You weren’t there as well, were you?
Hell no. Got more sense than that.
Well I was, and finding out that the Leeds paternoster is no longer in service has ruined my day. I was happily reminiscing on all the opportunities it gave for legitimately missing tutorials. I’m going back to my bed of delphiniums and not coming out again.
Just how good can Leeds be if they don’t teach you how to use a paternoster lift?
They taught us, but as good scientists we soon learned how to push our apparatus and experiments into realms for which they were not designed.
Bloody students. Always wrecking the equipment.
Henry – I would go further and suggest that all the best people went to Leeds to get half their degree in genetics.
Chris is merely Very Good, rather than the best for doing his degree in something else. IIRC, the biophysics department closed down shortly after he left.
I always take the stairs. Well, that’s what you get for working in a teaching hospital. Ironically having zero speedy access to lifts due to multitudes of sick people makes you fitter.
That sounds callous I realise, but it’s true. ;P
the biophysics department closed down shortly after he left
You can’t blame that on me. I was in my hammock and a thousand miles away at the time!
Now that’s clever, Chris!