Elevator Blues

This is an email I received from my bud David in Illinois. I thought it rather funny and since I had an elevator related encounter with an employee of this same company, I thought it a good story to share ~ Pato

"I was going along in my little delivery routine today and in one of my buildings I found myself in an elevator with a very angry lady. Let me explain.

You have probably heard of Paytime, they moved into one of the old Lucent buildings on my route back in December. It is a four story building with Paytime taking over the first and second floors. The mail room is on the first floor. Seems simple enough right? Not really. The first floor refuses to accept packages belonging to the second floor; and vice versa. Every package has to be checked to be sure I don't slip one over on them. The two upper floors are undergoing renovation, thus sometimes the freight elevator is tied up by construction workers.

This is a problem when I have my cart, so occasionally I use the passenger elevator. I try to be quick and hope no one sees me. Today I got caught big time.

I have never seen this lady before and probably will never see her again but what I saw of her for probably 30-40 seconds convinced me she was unstable.

“You know you're supposed to use the freight elevator." I tried to shrug it off and said “yes, I know.” Then she gets angrier, "What's your name?" I said David. "What's your last name?" At this point she is actually getting angrier, and scarier. I was not about to divulge my last name to this crazy lady and just said I was sorry. "You're not sorry at all; I'm going to file a complaint." The doors opened and she went left and I went right. I tell you, I have seen that look on someone’s face twice before and it was scary. She was visibly angry.

She probably told the building manager and that would be bad for me since he is wound pretty tight as well. I can work with him; his assistant is a real jerk though. She's another one who has to check all packages as well and gets mad if she has to sign for a package. I try to avoid her too.

Later I called the office just in case the crazy lady actually did call someone. At first my supervisor thought I might have cut someone off; that's probably a thing people complain about. When I told him my story and where I was he just laughed. Maybe the lovely people at Paytime do that a lot."

Yes David they do, here is another story about the same company and an elevator involving your dear Pato:

I think I know this lady..well, probably not, but she seems to be a typical Paytime employee.

I interviewed for a job with them in my St Louis days. For some reason, although the job was in St Louis, all the interviews were elsewhere. I went to Chicago for the first one and met a lady at the Hyatt downtown. It was a great interview. I had driven up from St Louis and was going to stop in Decatur to visit Donna for the weekend. I had not gotten to Decatur after the interview when the lady called me and said she was so impressed she wanted to schedule me to go to their HQ out east the following Tuesday. They overnighted a ticket and off I went.

I interviewed most of the day, and finally met the VP of HR. The haughtiest old bag I had ever encountered. In their HQ they had a huge glass elevator that was reserved for the big shots, or so I was told. Regular grunts took the enclosed ones on the side. When we left she told my escort, "take him down the glass elevator". Turning to me the escort lady said "this does not happen often". Woo hoo.

Got home... never heard from them again except for an unsigned form letter 6 months later asking if I wanted to continue to keep my resume active.

I concluded they were screwed up and had this thing about elevators. Your story confirms that and thus I urge you to avoid them at all costs. I think their entire staff is made up of nasty women with elevator issues. They are scary.