Shared Among Strangers

This afternoon I stepped onto the elevator in my downtown skyscraper office building. There was one other young man in the elevator already. I hit the button for my floor and the doors began to close.

At that very moment, an older woman in the lobby lunged for the closing doors, trying to catch the elevator, too. My companion sprang forward and pushed a button to hold open the doors for this woman. However, instead of hitting the "open" button, he pressed the "alarm" button by mistake.

The doors opened, but a loud alarm went off as well. An automated voice came over the loud speaker announcing "An emergency call has been initiated!" We were horrified and looked at each other sheepishly.

Within moments, a security guard was on the loudspeaker, asking what the nature of our problem was. We all glanced at each other and I said "Um... Our problem is that we pushed the wrong button - sorry about that". Security said "No problem" and hung up the line.

We all laughed about our little misadventure and got off the elevator on our respective floors. We will probably never see each other again, but we'll probably remember this incident for a long time.