Star Trek would be nice.

Downstairs to lobby of my grungy apartment building.
Upstairs to office on 6th floor.
Downstairs to Starbucks for an iced coffee, sweetened, room for cream. (Yes,
assholes, STARBUCKS. Not Blue Bottle. Not 4Barrel. Corporate, taking over
the world one corner at a time STARBUCKS. Delicious!)
Upstairs to office on 6th floor.
Downstairs to get lunch.
Upstairs to office on 6th floor.
Downstairs to Walgreens to get miscellaneous item for apartment, but end up
spending $35 on nonsense.
Upstairs to office on 6th floor.
Downstairs to leave work.
Upstairs to apartment.

I potentially, and quite often, ride an elevator 10 times a day. Saves me probably a mile or two of walking a day. Thank you, Elisha Otis, for inventing the elevator (I totally had to wiki that). You have made the lives of many less strenuous; old people won't hesitate to leave home just to avoid those arduous steps; the wheelchair bound will not be required to crawl around or be subjected to the humiliating position of being carried. Thank you kindly.

But a part of me hates you. Because of you, and modern society's general impatience for anything, elevator rides have become absolutely dreadful and with each one, almost always the "longest ride I ever had in my entire life." Cue eye roll and dramatic fingers to the temples.

As I have already pronounced, I think elevators are pretty fucking amazing. I trust that when I enter that little box with no windows and press a button, that I will be TRANSPORTED from one level of a building to another level of a building without walking. Truly amazing.

But it is not what the elevator does for me that I hate. It is what it does to other people that I hate.

7 out of 8 elevator rides in the office building (yes, that is an accurate statistic), some asshole in the elevator will make some "joke" about how there are too many stops before they arrive at their floor. They say stuff about wanting to close the door before someone can get in. They talk about how there should be a sensor that detects when there are 5 people on and that should be the limit. They talk about how there's no room to move. They talk they talk they talk they talk they talk. And you know what, with the lack of music in the elevators, it's not that I don't want them interrupting the peaceful silence. It's the fact that they are ALL TRYING TO BE FUNNY. Pretty sure everyone can agree that an unfunny asshole trying to be funny is the biggest kind of asshole. And perhaps I take their coworker to coworker mindless banter too seriously, but when I've heard it every weekday for every ride up/down the elevator, I am tempted to stab myself in the throat just so everyone can have SOMETHING ELSE TO SAY.

Then after coming home from work, I have my apartment complex elevator to look forward to. I live on the 5th floor, and though I COULD walk up those stairs, there are numerous reasons why I don't:
1. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th floor are occupied by one extended family. There are a bunch of kids who hang out in the lobby area of each floor as if it were their living room. There are toys everywhere. The teenagers sit on the stairs. They look at me like *I've* intruded into their private sanctum and *I* was NOT invited to play.
2. The building generally smells of a mix of beef pho and rancid milk. I have managed to keep that odor out of my apartment, thank god.
3. I iz so tireds sometimes.

So, I take the elevator. Now, usually I ride this elevator alone, so the office elevator annoyances are not relevant. In fact, the office elevator ride seems like a fuckin' cherry pickin' extravaganza in comparison to the apartment elevator ride. Why?

Urine.

Someone pissed in the elevator.

This happened maybe 2 weeks ago? 2 months ago, the geniuses that manage the building decided to strip the elevator floor from the old rug and install SHAG CARPET. It's auburn, fluffy, and honestly for the first day, quite comfortable to stand on. It looked god awful, but the old rug was stained to the point where I couldn't even tell what the original color was. But the moment I saw the shag carpet, I knew it was an awful idea.

And lo and behold, someone decided that he just could not wait to reach his floor and flipped out his dick and excreted in the elevator. As there are no pets allowed, I cannot blame this on an innocent, don't-know-any-better dog. As the stain was a longer tear-drop shaped streak, it certainly was not a woman. It was a man. Who peed. In my elevator.

I don't care if he was drunk. I don't care if he didn't live in the building. But one of the first things you learn as a fuckin' toddler is that you do not PEE just anywhere you want. Ever. Like, never ever.

Managers didn't do a thing for the first week. Just left it there to sit. And recently, someone (maybe the managers? maybe someone equally disgusted as me?) put some pink chemical on top to try to burn the smell out. Yes, please add more offensive smells to this 5' by 5' dungeon.

In the end, I can't help but think of Sims 1 teleporter that just transported you from one floor to the next. Yes, just like in Star Trek! Perhaps if I had that, I wouldn't be dealing with assholes and urine soaked shag carpets. Even if the teleporter malfunctioned while I was in it, at least I would have died gloriously with my particles floating around in unknown universes. Perhaps then I can be happy.