21 December 2004

What goes up

I mentioned that our engineers take engineer jokes with pretty good grace. Well, today Don found himself stuck in the elevator. After 40 minutes or so, one of the Security Guards suggested that Don make sure that the inner doors were completely closed. When Amy (an engineer) heard this, she mentioned that she didn't realize that elevators had inner doors and why would they? So I explained that if they didn't, once the elevator left the 8th floor, there'd be a big, gaping hole in the wall and every day we'd loose several engineers down the elevator shaft.

No howls of protest. No suggestions that I'd been unfair to the engineering staff. Nope. She just nodded and agreed. We have a pretty cool engineering staff.

(We also have a decent supply of stories about Don from his Westinghouse days. He is a great example of the absent-minded engineer and everyone who knows him from the old days insists that the story about Don dumping his coffee down his shift front when someone asked him the time is completely true.)


3 comments:

David Gorsline said...

Don's a cross-dresser?

When you write "inner doors," I take you to mean the doors on each floor that prevent engineer-fueled gravity experiments. Don couldn't verify the state of those doors, because he's inside the car.

Leta said...

Nope, the "inner doors" (according to the security guard) are the doors inside the car. Don closed them, the elevator started, and all was well.

But the picture of Don cross dressing (thanks to my typo) is going to keep coming back to me all day.

The Green Baron said...

Being an engineer myself I can relate. I once (absent-mindedly) tipped over a cup of coffee to see if it was full. It was.