Types of people you meet in a university elevator
University graduates may have conquered the land of advising schedules, battled the throng of impossible faculty members, and even come out victorious in the face of the nightmare which we call "administration". However, we have not yet mastered the art of being the perfect passenger on a university elevator.
Dhaka is an over-populated city; and the concept of personal space is lost upon many. However there exist a few minutes daily when those of us who frequent universities and use university elevators willingly give up our already nonexistent personal space. And while upon these mystical chambers of elevation, we have all come into contact with at least some, if not all, of these familiar characters:
THE STINKER
Their reputation (read: stench) precedes them. You can only hope that they don't ride the lift all the way to your floor, because you're going blue in the face with the effort of holding your breath.
THE CHATTERERS
These people have no qualms about divulging their lives' saucy details to a lift full of strangers. At best, you'll be annoyed at them for their lack of elevator etiquette. At worst, you'll be left with a raging curiosity about what happened after the second cat bit their cousin.
THE LAZY ONE
After trying to reach G from the 14th floor, and stopping at each, so that by the time you've reached the second floor you wonder if there was a window you could have just jumped out of, someone has decided to ride the elevator to make their way down a single storey. You close your eyes and breathe deeply through your nostrils, because otherwise, you might just end up hurting this person.
THE ARCHITECTURE MAJOR
(Yes they needed their own category: Fight me!)
These poor souls have no choice but to carry their life's work, sometimes in bits and pieces, and at other times in gargantuan sets that make you wonder why the university doesn't just make a dumbwaiter for these people yet. We feel for you, architecture majors. You will graduate one of these days. Carry those 6 foot long models made of shashlik sticks with pride.
THE EATER/SPILLER
These people have more confidence in their ability to carry four plates of fuchkas up ten floors than I have in my ability to pour a glass of water without spilling. However, their faith does nothing to reassure us that those seven precariously full coffee cups on that makeshift tray won't cause a catastrophe any second now. It also does nothing to rid the closed metal box of the odour of stale Chinese food. Please, stop.
The university elevator experience is one that you must put up with if you're one of the unlucky souls doomed to graduate from this city. You've just got to buck up and get it over with. What's reassuring is that these experiences won't last more than five minutes at a time, UNLESS you encounter the infamous Indecisive One. Those people must have a special spot in hell, but they'd probably never get there because they don't know if it's on the 13th or 4th.
Rabita Saleh is a perfectionist/workaholic. Email feedback to this generally boring person at [email protected]
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