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Jackpot!

It's the little things in life that make it better. Yesterday I hit the jackpot of little things, literally. Let me explain.

I work on the fifth floor of a nine story building. I had occasion yesterday afternoon to be on the eight floor. Being a fan of stairs mainly when used in the down direction I decided to take the elevator. There are two groups of elevators here; a set of five and a set of three. Since I needed to be in the main lobby of the building (I have no idea why it’s on the eight floor) and since only one bank of elevators went there I walked over to the vestibule for the bank of three and pressed the up arrow call button.

There are a lot of people who work in this building and there are a lot of people who visit here everyday. Some people tend to use the "employee only" elevators since there are more of them and they are less busy; but they are on the far end of the building and do not directly lead to any food source so they do not get utilized as much. Using the main group means you will have to wait and wait for a car and when it does come it’ll be mostly full. No one else was waiting for the elevators and so the call button had not been pushed. I pressed the button I settled in expecting a long wait followed by a much too close for comfort ride.

What happened next should go down on the yellow legal pad of office building lore.

The indicator light for left most elevator turned green and the bell when off. ding! As I started to walk toward it the bell and light for the center elevator went off. ding! Thinking it a bit odd that two elevators arrived at the same time I turned to enter that car since it was closer when the bell and light for the third elevator chimed. ding! All three elevators had arrived on the fifth floor all at once!

I stepped back for just a moment. This was like hitting three in a row on a slot machine.

Cherry. Cherry. Cherry! Ding, ding ding! Winner! Winner!

But this is not where the story ends. To make this moment all the sweeter all three cars were empty. No bicycle messengers, no pizza delivery guys, no marketing people with giant cardboard cutouts from the latest promotion. Nobody. This was not just three cherries in a row; this was the Jackpot.

I paused for just a moment longer to bask in the small gift then stepped in the center car and pressed the button for the eighth floor.

If I work here for another ten years could I never hope to have that happen again. All I can do now is think back on that day and remember when I hit the elevator jackpot.

Now if you will excuse me I am going out to the front of the building to see if my pile of winnings has spilled out from the rainspout.