Whos afraid of the big bad lift?

Perhaps it is rude to admit it, but if I have just entered the office lift and am waiting for the doors to close when a colleague swings into view hoping to catch the lift I am already in, I will pretend I am too engrossed in the morning’s newspapers to notice them and enjoy a peaceful, twenty-second comfortable ride to my floor. Yes, I admit this is perhaps a tad rude, yet there is something about the office lift that I find remarkably uncomfortable. I could be chatting to a great friend of mine, reeling off the greatest story ever told, then I step into the constricting, grey box and my train of thought comes to the end of the line and I completely lose my focus spending the remainder of the journey awkwardly smiling at my companion or pretending to read the only sign that is in the lift, the sign I now know off by heart.

It seems however that the strange grey box does not only bring about a change in my behaviour but also in my work colleagues. Let us pretend that most mornings, no matter how hard I try for it not to be, my lift-buddy is the same person. Let us also pretend that lift-buddy is called Jean and that Jean works in the Human Resources department. Now, during the roughly seven hours, fifty-nine minutes and forty seconds that we do not share a lift Jean does not even recognise my existence in the office. We pass each other, me offering a slightly nervous but-I like to think-friendly smile of acknowledgement while Jean looks dead ahead, her eyes not leaving the dull, brown carpet-which really isn’t very attractive-much like Jean.
In the mornings, however, when she becomes my lift buddy I am greeted with a wry, wide smile that appears to be held open by string. The greeting I am offered could be one of three depending on the day of the week. Monday’s bring a cheery ‘How was your weekend?’ The other end of the week I am asked ‘Up to much this weekend?’ and if it is any of the three days in between it is generally regarding the state of Britain’s weather, positive or negative depending on London’s weather that morning. But I wonder whether Jean really cares about the answers to these questions because as soon as we have reached my floor, the smile fades and it is back to the solemn stare at the ground.

As a result, I have found myself deliberately being ten minutes late for work to avoid the awkward moment and was delighted when greeting me as I enter the lift this morning was an attractive secretary I have seen around the office but not yet spoke to. We stepped into the lift, a few moments silence before ‘How was your weekend?’