I knew it was going to be a great day when my first task (checking the mailbox) resulted in my getting stuck in the elevator. That's what I like to call an "omen", that is.

My office complex is like a maze: there might seem to be multiple ways to get anywhere, but experience teaches that only one really works. Getting down to the mail room, which is built into one end of one of the parking decks, is a case in point. There is a wide stairway outside my building that leads to the street and it's only 11 or 12 steps - outside in the lovely fresh air - but the problem with that is that 98% of the time, once I've walked down them and 1/3 down the block to enter the next building's parking deck (which houses the mailroom), the entry grates are down. The grates are like what the stores at the mall pull down at closing, but they pull them over the entry lanes to the deck at what appears to be (a) most, and (b) totally random, hours. There's no other way into the deck from the outside, so I have to retrace my steps, walk back up the short stairway and take the elevator down to the inside anyway. Which is why I was taking the elevator in the first place, instead of walking down like a normal human being - because the walking bit proves futile more often than not. (This may seem like needless exposition, but the grate issue is relevant later, in addition to being the impetus for my mid-morning disaster.)

I summon the elevator to go one! whole! level! down inside the parking deck, the right-hand car arrives, I press the button, I descend, retrieve the mail without incident and return to make the ascent back to street level. The left-hand car arrives, I enter and press one.

When the car arrives at street level, it jerks violently to a halt, not so violently as to actually make me fall but enough so that I stumble off balance a bit. If I'd have been wearing stilettos, I'd have definitely fallen. The doors do not open. WTF? I press the 'door open' button, scowl, press it again. Nothing happens. I consider calling for help but these are older cars and instead of a phone they have that alarm. Afraid that no one would pay attention to the alarm (does anyone really notice a car alarm these days?) and I'd be on my own anyway, I keep pressing the "door open" button with increased force, because, you know, THAT will work. Nothing. By now enough time has elapsed (15, 20 seconds) for me to start to panic and wonder if the cable might break, and if so whether anyone will find my remains before inner-city rats have feasted upon me. Hey, I'm not exactly rational when I'm panicking.

I press ALL of the buttons. Multiple times. Finally, after enough of a pause to make me consider trying to pry open the doors with my iPod and repel down the cable, the car goes all the way down, past the mail-room level to another, then all the way back up. The doors still don't open so I push all the buttons again, with the same result. Both times the car jerks to a violent halt and the doors refuse to open. I can see via the light through the crack where the doors meet that it is jerking to a halt 4 - 6 inches below the floor. If the doors would only open, I could have stepped out easily but they won't.

I keep pushing all the buttons and finally the doors open when the car is all the way down on Level C and I get the hell out of the elevator. But then I didn't know what to do! Sure, I could attempt to take the stairs, but remember how well that worked out for me previously? I got trapped in the stairwells because the doors lock automatically from the parking deck-side. I was loathe to try walking round and round up the parking deck because I was certain that I'd do so only to find the grates down and no means of escape, so instead I summon the elevators once, twice, thrice...okay, a bunch of times but OF COURSE the only car to answer my summons is the one I'd so recently escaped from, and I'm a firm believer in that old "fool me once" adage. So with a heavy sigh I readjust my backpack, wiggle my piggy-toes inside my pointy pumps and begin the sorry business of trying not to be run over as I wind round and round and round up the levels of parking deck.

Certain that they'd have the aforementioned grates down, I hike onward figuring that this way, I at least will have the advantage of making someone hear or see me on the other side of the grate, which was more than I had going for me in the elevator. But lo and behold, when I finally arrive from the subterranean depths to street level, two of the three grates are open and I am able to escape.

I'm supposed to be at work at nine, and I'd arrived today at 8:20 although after the elevator adventure, I was 11 minutes late getting to my desk. I was WAITING! HOPING! DARING! The Boss to make the merest, most minuscule mention of my tardiness, but he either (a) didn't notice or (b) bought into that whole 'discretion is the better part of valor' thing - or maybe a combo. The Boss is a very smart man, y'know. After all, he makes me fetch the mail.