Ding!

As I have a few more hours to kill before going to work later this evening, I want to talk about something hashtag #irritating that everyone will encounter when you are in this hospital. Well I am not naming my hospital, but maybe some of you know or don't know where I work, anyway let's just leave it as it is. That something #irritating is called,

THE LIFTS.

You may laugh and pointed out how callous or petty my topic is but believe me, the lifts they have in this place can and will drive you all to nuts. As opposed to new hospital buildings which have more than one lift lobby, my hospital only have one main lift lobby with 5 + 1 lifts and a smaller lift lobby at the far back that is used for VIP or royalties. The far back one has two lifts and they are also connected to multiple floors of operation theatres. 

Now, to all visitors and staff alike, the lifts that we use are the ones in the main lift lobby. There are 3 lifts in a row facing two lifts opposite and another one lift to the side that is for sanitation materials and waste use. Let me draw a quick sketch of the plan of the lifts in the main lobby:

Okay just imagine this is it, alright? It's not accurate so don't bother pointing it out.

Now to begin with,

Ever since I started working here close to 11 months now, LIFT 4 has never been operational. There is always a stop sign in front of its doors saying close for maintenance. Or wait, there might have been in the past, now I don't even remember about that lift because I never use it.

Lift 5 is reserved only for patients, in the sense that the patients being transferred in wheelchairs and in bed. The transit is both ways, either from ED to the wards or from the wards to Radiology department for imaging or being sent to different floors such as ICU or to OTs. There are security guards stationed at every floor that keep track of the movement of that lift to ensure that the waiting time or the transit time of the transferring patient being kept at the minimum.

I have no quarrel with that lift. That lift is a good boy.

The remaining lifts are straight a-holes. 

Lift 3 can go between Ground floor up to the 6th floor. Now I am in Medical posting at the moment, which are in the 7th and 8th floors. Yes, I can always use that lift and take the stairs to my ward, and yes, it will keep me healthy, 

And the #irritating thing about that lift is that its bloody doors won't even shut off properly. Imagine being in my situation; you are late / tired / in a hurry / claustrophobic and the lift decided that as the doors almost close it opens the doors back 2 to 3 times. There is no one outside who is pushing the buttons and no one inside pressing the open door button but that damned lift still like to toy with my feelings and wastes a good 5 minutes just to close the bloody doors. What a dick.

The next #irritating lift is Lift 2. This one is an epic one because you can only press the buttons 7th and 8th floors. They used to put a plastic cover but they changed it to a freakin' metal cover with three square holes so people inside can only press G, 7, and 8. The idea is that this lift is meant for people who wish to go to Medical wards faster. That idea is a novelty and naive at the same time simply because it won't stop people from stopping that damned said lift from other floors! So what's supposed to be quick ride upstairs or downstairs can be equally exhausting and long if the lift stops at every floor to load and unload people.

Adjacent to it is the Lift 1 which is supposed for people to go from Ground floor to the 5th up to 8th floors. During the peak hours there will be a guard manning the lift from the inside who will stop people and ask which floor they are going. If the answer is less than 5, they will stop you and ask to use other lifts. In practice, this is also a dick move because like I explained earlier, have you seen the annoying bloody lift directly opposite like?

Apart from that, Lift 1 has this #irritating quirk which that in between the stops, it will sometimes reset all the buttons. All the lighted floors will disappear and if you are not quick enough, what's supposed to be a going up lift will suddenly become a going down lift when someone downstairs is calling for the lift. This, my friends, is enough to make anyone scream with frustration especially when you are from 8th floor going down to Ground floor and on the 1st floor it happened and now it goes back up to where you came from. #TrueStory bro.

Most of the times, Lift 6 comes to the rescue. But it has its own drawback as you will be sharing it with huge waste and sanitation bins. The floor sometimes is wet from the leaking bins, and sometimes it is as smelly as the darkest pit of Tartarus, and one time it lost all lighting and air ventilation for a week and hence the smell magnifies to a hundred-fold. I had to be in complete darkness with odors of garbage and human piss or whatever bodily fluid there are  but that lift is the only lift with no stupid quirk that #irritates me to no end.

Now that I let it off my chest with this rant of mine, I do feel lightened up. It is as if my spirit has lifted up!