This afternoon, I headed over to the Outpatient Center to meet with new colleagues on a project I'm joining. On my way up, in the elevator, I realized that the guy riding up with me is one of the people I will be working with. I "realized" it by intently reading his name badge, and avoiding eye contact, then saying, "I think we're heading to the same place." All of that came off just slightly creepy. But New Colleague was a nice guy and we struck up a conversation. Soon, the elevator door opened (and what we thought was the 6th floor). People got in. And New Colleague realized that we were riding down.
Apparently, both of us thought we were on the 6th floor when we had actually reached the 7th (our destination). Because we both mistook the elevator number for the floor number. Because, one could reasonably argue, we are both idiots. So we rode down to the 4th floor. Then the 2nd. Then all the way down to the LL.
When the last rider exited, she very kindly explained that she was a temp worker at the hospital and used to make the same mistake all the time. She told us where to look to know what floor we were on. And to press '7' to get to the 7th floor. It was all very sweet of her.
But really, she gave us a step by step tutorial on how to ride the elevator. That's 1 MD/PhD. 1 PhD in training. 1 elevator tutorial.
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