Office Escape: An Unexpected Night Out

This is a story about 6 co-workers that were trapped in the office building after a power outage caused the elevator to stop working.

The day started out like any other Friday. Workers arrived at the office, checked their e-mails and prepared for a long day of work. The first person that arrived was Michael. He was always early. He woke up at 5:30AM and left his house at 6:00AM. He then took public transportation to the office where he arrived at 6:30AM.

Next was Salima who came rolling in on her bike around 7:30 AM. She rode her bike to work because she wanted to save money by not taking public transportation every day. She thought this would be fun until she fell off her bike and broke her collar bone last month. After that incident, her parents said she should just take public transportation because riding a bike on city streets can be dangerous. But she decided not to listen to them. Today she wasn’t wearing a helmet because it was too hot outside and she didn’t want to ruin her hair with helmet hair.

Joe was next to arrive at 8:00 AM as usual, or so he thought. To his surprise, he saw Salima wearing her bike helmet walking towards the building through the same door that Michael had left through an hour ago.

“Hey Salima, what’s up?” Joe asked as they both reached the elevator bank. “Why are you here already? Did you take a bus this morning?”

Salima nodded and replied with a smile, “Yes! I am so happy! I got here much faster than I usually do when I ride my bike! This is great!”

Joe frowned and shook his head as they entered the elevator together and pressed the button for their floor number. “You know we all have different starting times right? We are supposed to meet in the lobby at 8:00 AM so we can go up together in the elevator!”

“Oh yeah…” Salima responded dejectedly after remembering their weekly meeting in the lobby each Friday morning before going up to their respective floors in the elevator together. They both got off on their floor number and went their separate ways; Joe continued walking down the hallway towards his cubicle while Salima walked into the bathroom to fix her hair back into place after biking through raging winds along city streets where parked cars lined both sides of the road all morning long.

Vladimir arrived at 8:20 AM after taking half an hour eating breakfast at home with his family before he finally left for work around 7:40 AM, and only because his wife reminded him repeatedly that if he didn’t leave soon he would be late for work again this week which would mean another headache for her. She would have to call him during his trip over to work, telling him he needs to leave now or else he will be fired from his job again. Last week, she had spoken with his supervisor personally about it over the phone, saying how unprofessional he was being by being late every single day this past month without fail because of something like oversleeping even though he always slept early every night. Vladimir loved eating dinner with his children and wife every night more than anything else in life except maybe drinking vodka, but not during work hours, of course, because Vladimir is an adult after all and needs to get up early each morning.