Elevator for the Last Time

I work at 75 Albert St., more popularly known as the OHIP building. I work on the 5th floor. A typical morning involves biking to work and sweating it up the stairs. If one works in an office and doesn’t belong to a gym, one should hustle one’s ass as much as possible otherwise.

But I’ve found a new reason to take the stairs.

Yesterday, Monday, after a particularly shitty and emotionally excruciating Sunday, I did not feel like taking the stairs. I felt like I deserved to be lazy (and have 5 teacups of coffee, jitter jitter). I walked in to the lobby and there were 4 or 5 people waiting, the elevator opened, we all filed in and one by one we hit the buttons. Beep, pause, beep, pause, beep, pause, the machine that lifts us registers our desired location. Beep, pause, beep. All in time, rote, and I could not wait to get the fuck off the cattle truck. I’m sure there’s an abattoir in the penthouse.

This morning, obviously I was back at the sweaty stairs. Two people came in the stairwell behind me and damned if I didn’t feel like a little worker ant, hauling my pack upstairs.

Better a squished ant than a calf to the slaughter.