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- Lucas123, on 04/21/2008, -7/+836The two questions I'd ask upon exiting the elevator: Where's the bathroom? Where's my lawyer?
- mavicyp, on 04/21/2008, -6/+806i would have been driven insane too. that's just a living nightmare. How could security screw that up so badly?
- inactive, on 04/21/2008, -3/+656Hope he was being paid by the hour.
Why didn't security look at the video?It is obvious that the video was being fed somewhere. - PaulPi3rce, on 04/21/2008, -31/+545Moral: Don't smoke.
- tbhurst, on 04/21/2008, -14/+415Oh man, that poor dude. It's kind of sad to see him keep opening the elevator door as if it would look any differently than it did 30 minutes earlier.
- Protist, on 04/21/2008, -1/+345As per the article posted above, the way it ended up for the guy in the elevator is quite sad:
"Caught up in media attention (which he shunned but thrilled to), prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment. He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go.
The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite.
Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed." - Alphateam, on 04/21/2008, -2/+338http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/0804 ...
Article on the topic - DeskFlyer, on 04/21/2008, -0/+325Wow, there's no words to describe how bad that would be to experience. I sort of wish they slowed the part where the elevator started working again back to real time to we could see him interact with the first person he saw.
- hobbers, on 04/21/2008, -9/+311White never went back to work at the magazine. Caught up in media attention (which he shunned but thrilled to), prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment. He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.
Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another. Still, he now sees that it wasn’t so much the elevator that changed him as his reaction to it. He has come to terms with the trauma of the experience but not with his decision to pursue a lawsuit instead of returning to work. If anything, it prolonged the entrapment. He won’t blame the elevator. - Witchdoktor, on 04/22/2008, -5/+303You masturbated to this video?
- D3koy, on 04/21/2008, -1/+288Note to Self: Can easily break into the McGraw Hill Building through the elevators, no one seems to monitor them
- UsedToVacation, on 04/21/2008, -3/+287Imagine 41 hours of elevator music.....
The horror... - inactive, on 04/21/2008, -2/+252Where's a beautiful woman when you need one to be stuck with you?
- inactive, on 04/21/2008, -9/+241that had to be horrifying. I bet he will never go in the elevator again.
- Namaha, on 04/21/2008, -8/+225Why hello there internet tough guy!
- MasterMynd, on 04/21/2008, -20/+221thank god for masturbation.
- Zandarrr, on 04/21/2008, -1/+175At least the light stayed on. I can't imagine being trapped that long in the dark. :shudders:
Did he open the door to pee? - sononame, on 04/21/2008, -0/+170I'm not sure how long it would take me before I took off my clothes
- rdrysdale, on 04/21/2008, -41/+203If I was that guy, when the doors finally opened, I would have beaten someone senseless.
- h0ser, on 04/21/2008, -2/+164There would be many broken buttons after i was thruogh with it.
- hummstheword, on 04/21/2008, -5/+147Would have been 10 times better with sound from the elevator.
- Harabeck, on 04/21/2008, -0/+140He was taking a leak.
- inactive, on 04/21/2008, -8/+140That poor guy! Didn't anyone know he was there?
- BedPost, on 04/22/2008, -1/+131I do that with my fridge...
- Pogojoe, on 04/21/2008, -2/+122From the New Yorker article "After a time, he pressed the emergency button, setting off an alarm bell, mounted on the roof of the elevator car, but he could tell that its range was limited. Still, he rang it a few more times and eventually pulled the button out, so that the alarm was continuous."
The alarm was going off THE WHOLE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Insanity ensues... - bigdoug2005, on 04/21/2008, -3/+108They call those dorm rooms
- Vinthian, on 04/21/2008, -2/+93If you look closer, you can see that he took a leak everytime he opened the door. Smart man.
- justintsmith, on 04/21/2008, -0/+88Funny enough, that's exactly what happened. And it cost him his job. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/0804 ...
- fissionvsfusion, on 04/21/2008, -5/+90I've had a similar experience of being trapped with no end in sight: ECON 101.
- GemStar38, on 04/21/2008, -2/+87People were actually doing work on the other elevators. Astounding that he wasn't discovered earlier.
- sockpuppets, on 04/21/2008, -0/+81The 120 feet high club?
- jasonmanley, on 04/21/2008, -2/+83If what you say is true, then there is a very important lesson to be learnt here: Just because you can exploit a situation doesn't mean that you should. If it is true that he DELIBERATELY never worked because it would ruin his chances of litigation then I am afraid that he must bare the responsibility for that. What happened to him is terrible, but once the dust has settled we all, as mature and responsible members of society, need to do the right thing for the right reasons. Would I have acted differently? Who knows. I only know that we need to all learn from life, every lesson that it has to offer.
- theotheragentm, on 04/21/2008, -7/+85Yeah, but they were leaving him there for pushing all the buttons at once. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
- FasmTrout, on 04/21/2008, -0/+76Thanks for the heads up. I was worried a URL with newyorker.com in it would be a Rick Roll.
- themastersb, on 04/22/2008, -3/+79Reminds me of that time I got stuck on an escalator because of it malfunctioning.
- ophello, on 04/22/2008, -48/+122nice, but next time post a ***** link so i can see the source. thanks.
- ch33sehead, on 04/22/2008, -7/+78Don't have to be such an ass about it, ophello. You could've just google searched the first line in quotes.
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q ... - kakwakas, on 04/21/2008, -0/+70I'm pretty sure at that point you wouldn't really give a damn if there's a "NO SMOKING" sign somewhere.
- DeskFlyer, on 04/21/2008, -0/+70According to an article someone posted below he said he was able to open the doors to take a leak. I'm glad he was able to at least that much.
- inactive, on 04/21/2008, -0/+68Hot damn that's a lot of words.
- Bukowsky, on 04/21/2008, -5/+73Not being able to pee or have a smoke for 41 hours was probably worse then the claustrophobia he may or may not have been feeling. I just hope he at least got the rest of the week off!
- surasshu, on 04/21/2008, -0/+66He probably played Street Fighter 1.
- inactive, on 04/22/2008, -3/+69I wonder if he'll take the stairs from now...
- dubloe7, on 04/21/2008, -0/+63I think the lights are automatic.
- MackenzieArbour, on 04/22/2008, -0/+59You didn't?
- LordSkywalker, on 04/21/2008, -1/+59Reminds me of the 1st episode of the Twilight Zone, "Where Is Everybody?" where the govt does an mind experiment on a guy. They enclose him in a box for 400+ hrs to see how he'd react on a round trip to the moon.
- Goodbyeworld, on 04/21/2008, -6/+63"Imagine a room that is too short for you to stand up and too narrow for you to lay down"
Complete isolation? *****, I would have just cried. - googooly, on 04/21/2008, -0/+57I once stuck in the elevator for 45 min. you dont wana know how boring it could get after 5 min.
- da_bradler, on 04/22/2008, -1/+58He must have been really dehydrated by the end of that, I mean most regular people don't keep themselves properly hydrated in the first place, so two whole days without water would be torture.
- max420, on 04/21/2008, -5/+62I would of just lit a smoke, and blew it at the smoke detector (if one exists)... I am sure that would have gotten someones attention.
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