Rise Up

I'm cold and contrary right now.
I'm in the restaurant that INVENTED PIZZA, and some yokels are installing new lotto machines.
First, they had to disconnect the gamblers from the machines, then the machines from the wall.
They have left the door open for over half an hour, either to remove them easily, or to get on my fucking nerves.
Whichever it is, they've succeeded in both.
What's your elevator brand?
I'm an Otis man, myself.
I know that some of you diehards will say that ThyssenKrupp is the only way to go.
Misguided!
Isn't it weird that soon we'll have little to no need for grocery clerks, bank tellers, and librarians, but we still need the guy who fixes the escalator?
Ever walk on an escalator that wasn't operating?
Mitch Hedberg once famously said (paraphrased), "Escalators can never become broken; they can only become stairs." 
However, broken escalators are more a sort of optical illusion than anything else.
Having grown up in the middle classes that we did, we expect them to move.
"Circulate, steps! I command this!"
That's what your brain is saying while you try to ascend the descend.
"You dare refuse me, glorified conveyor belt?!
Very well, then. I'll continue to walk on you as though you are moving, and come very near to falling."
A broken escalator is an Escher sketch.
A fellow childhood chum had a father who repaired the elevators.
As much a crisis negotiator as anything else, when you think about it.
That is, when you're the sardine in the tin when it decides to stop doing its up and down.
You're claustrophobic. Your ice cream is melting. Your water is about to break.
You have to get out of this death trap.
When you pick up the emergency phone, who is it that picks it up at the other end?
That's right, some switchboard person.
But! Who comes to jimmy you out of there?
Exactly.
When I dwell on the occupation, it makes me sad, somehow.
I suppose I envision a guy in a tool belt, sitting by the phone, waiting for people to plummet to their deaths.
However, this is a society of luxury suites and Super 8s.
Elevator guys are likely kept busy and unionized.
It just seems like a forgotten job.
Even while fixing a lift in front of a group of people.
Even after lowering the rope into the well, where your twitching grasp awaits.
Despite this, I get the impression that it doesn't really occur to people that there are elevator repairmen.
And that's sad.
Ditto for the lotto machine guys.
Even when they joke loudly near your table in both English and French.
Even when they distract you from writing a post about something as mundane as elevator repairmen.
Even then. I don't really realize these guys do this every day.