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Cost-cutting Measures

Valerie Buko

    It was around mid-day when the elevator doors in the dimly-lit lobby of the shabby apartment building began clunking together, again and again and again.
    It wasn’t long before a tenant, a middle-aged woman, buzzed through the front door of the building, and entered the lobby. Her breathing was laboured as she slowly approached the elevator, ailment-alleviating oxygen tank in tow. Upon hearing and seeing the clunking doors, she stopped short, hesitating. Grave look on her face. More hesitation. The woman shook her head in despair, shouted, “Why?! Why?!”, and grimaced as she pushed the elevator doors open, and gingerly stepped inside the usually useful contraption. She pushed a button marked ‘16’, and grimly awaited her fate, nerves wracked with trepidation. The doors slid closed and the elevator disappeared.

    When it returned to the ground floor, the elevator’s doors opened, and continued their errant behaviour; repeatedly banging together and bouncing opening again.
    After only a few bounces, the next riders appeared. They were a sexy, younger couple, grasping each other in a tight, groping embrace, gasping for more of each other. Their bodies thrashed into the wall beside the elevator doors, and then they fell together inside, onto its floor, not even noticing anything ersatz, as the doors closed...
Up, up and up they went.
    The next tenant was much more aware of what was going on. She stood, wide-eyed, watching this certain death-trap with disbelief and distrust, mouth gaping. Then, she turned sharply on her low, rubber-soled leather heels, clutched her woolen jacket more tightly around her, and headed for the stairs. Twenty-five floors to climb or not, she would not take a chance on a broken elevator.
    The elevator kept up its unusual movements for close to fifteen minutes before the next elevator riders appeared. A young mother, pushing a cheap stroller with a six-month old infant inside, and two other toddlers clinging onto her legs and coat, crying and whining for something or other, approached the elevator. She stopped, and just stared. She knew she should not climb aboard with her cantankerous but precious brood. When the crying approached shrieking, however, head pounding and energy failing, she ushered them all inside. The crying could still be heard as the elevator climbed higher and higher, up to the fifteenth floor.
    As the clock in the lobby ticked towards late afternoon, a uniformed man came out of a small utility room, clipboard in hand. He looked at and assessed the data he had gathered.

    “Seventy-five per cent,” he mumbled to himself. “Seventy-five per cent cannot be made to climb the stairs in this building... guess we’ll leave this one operational; no cost-cutting measures to be found here.”
    He stepped up to a small panel beside the elevator, unlocked and opened it. He examined the function buttons for a few seconds, then, after turning a dial from ‘Experimental’ to ‘Functioning Normally’, he left the lobby, contentedly whistling a favourite tune.

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