I got stuck in a staircase!

Ever interested in discovering new things, I was in my University library doing research when I found a hitherto unnoticed stairwell on the south side of the building. There were no "Keep Out" signs and the door wasn't locked, so I ventured forth and down a flight to the previous floor, only to discover that there was no handle on the door. Puzzled, I went back up to where I started from, and saw that the door I came through didn't have a handle on this side, either. I traversed the entirety of that staircase, which mercifully only went about five floors, and found only one door with a handle, which was an emergency exit that would set off an alarm if opened. One of the other doors had a chipped section where a handle had once been attached, and I tried to use a pen to pry the door open, but it didn't work.

After about ten minutes of this, I finally spotted someone moving through the stacks in the basement (thank God the door had a window pane in it!) and knocked to get his attention. It turns out that what I had found was a maintenance staircase, and for some reason the third floor door leading to it that I had walked through hadn't been locked up properly. The basement door was a security door, so the library employee had to go to his boss and turn off the alarms before he could finally let me out!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

omg! Glad you're ok.

Heh, very appropriate icon! The library guy had an absolutely priceless expression on his face when he saw me on the other side of that door. Only I could get myself into a situation like that, I tells ya!

Hee :D

I was laughing at myself the whole time anyway. Thanks for your concern! :)

I know exactly how you feel. Only you were actually trapped whereas I was once trapped due to a misunderstanding of how the door worked... :o)

It was the end of the day, after a good three and a half hours in the lab, and Adam and myself were the last to leave. The automatic doors at the front of the building wouldn't open. I tried to push them open, at the same time that Adam went towards the panel of buttons on the wall. A little beepy alarm went off. I thought it was because of me - so did Adam. We spent the next fifteen minutes wandering around the (now empty) building looking for someone to let us out, before we got to the balcony at the top of the stairs overlooking the inside courtyard (there were two buildings integrated into one a few years ago) and a woman down by the evil door said to us "Did you try the release button?"

It is a natural, human, instinctive response to say the following in this situation:
"There's a release button?!"
...which both Adam and I said simultaneously.
So it turned out the alarm was a proximity thing to warn people away from the buttons - nothing to do with me trying to force the doors. But anyway, we got out. And that's the important thing in these stories, isn't it? Everyone gets a good laugh at our expense, but we got out okay in the end :o)

Who thinks to look for a release button when the doors are supposed to be automatic? Usually if they're not working, they're made so you can push them open and get out in case there's a fire or something and the power's out. My sister had a similar experience a couple years ago when she was driving at night over a mountain and a deer ran into her car. It didn't appear to do a lot of damage, but after she stopped and the deer ran off, she couldn't get her car to start. It didn't rev or anything. Just was completely dead, which is NEVER a good thing to have happen on a dark, deserted road on a mountain in the middle of Hicksville. Fortunately, we have roadside assistance through AAA, but she couldn't get a cell signal so she had to WALK a quarter mile or so back to her friends' house (it happened right after she left for home, the only good part of it all), use their phone to call for a tow truck and then call home in the middle of the night and explain it all. The parents quite naturally freaked.

Turns out her car had a built-in safety feature that automatically shuts down the engine when you get in an accident, and all she'd needed to do was pop her truck and press a yellow button to get it going again.

A yellow button!

Stupid funny coloured buttons. The release button for the automatic doors was shaped like a light-switch for some reason, with a green border. It did say 'release button', just not very big or obvious.
Important buttons should always be bright red!

With the words "Panic Button" prominently displayed on them. I can't believe there's no government regulation on this yet!

But who would think to put an engine re-start button in the *trunk* of a car?? And a light switch? I swear, the world is out to confuse us poor, panicky souls at every turn. Already I know I'm going to be living the next few months by checking that every door I go through has a handle on both sides!

The trunk is the boot, right? At the back? And it wasn't one of those weird cars with the engine in the boot? Those are strange. Engines belong in the front, under the bonnet! The hood, I think you'd call it. Buttons especially should not be in the boot if the engine isn't.

And yeah, doors can make you paranoid. I spent three months approaching automatic doors and fervently wishing for them to open. The doors to the Union shop occasionally open very slowly, so you have to stand there waiting. The first time they did this to me was the day after I got stuck in the lab building. I almost got a little panicky for a second before they started to edge apart :oD

*crash* Whoa, the caffeine suddenly vanished! Yikes. I think I just took a little nap without realizing it. Eek.

But anyway, yes, correctamundo, boot=trunk, hood=bonnet. I've occasionally been known to go a little faux Brit around here (who'd have thought so many Doctor Who fans would be from overseas?? *dum American!*) but for some reason I feel like being my normal Yank self today. And no, the engine was under the bonnet, right where it should have been. So yeah, just plain odd. The automatic doors at the local Karns foodstore are slow like that. A couple times when I've been in a rush I've nearly run smack into them. Colliding with *automatic* doors. How embarrassing would that be?

There are indeed a great many of you :o)
And I think it's a mixture of language differences and motoring ignorance, to be honest *grins*

Yeah... Colliding with automatic doors *cough* That would be embarrassing.

Well, I kind of got lost/trapped in a hospital once. My grandmother had to go to the emergency room at about 1 a.m. (she ended up being OK) and I went along. So they had her in a room and we were waiting and waiting for the doctor to show up. I decided to buy something from a vending machine I'd noticed through the window of a nearby door. So I left the room and went through the door, only to find that the machine didn't sell anything I wanted. Went to go back to my grandmother's room, only to find that the door I had gone through had LOCKED behind me so I was stuck in a corridor. And no one was around! I waited for someone to pass the door with the window in it so I could wave or pound for attention, but no one did for a while so I looked for another way out.

Seems they felt the need to lock up most of the ground floor tight as a drum during the night. Along the corridor I found another few doors, and only one was unlocked. Went through that one, was in another corridor with mostly locked doors. This happened a couple times, with me not seeing a single person on the way, then I somehow ended up outdoors, on the far side of the building. A hospital employee was out there smoking (great example!) and she got me back to my grandmother's room. Finally. All I had wanted to do was buy from the vending machine!

Ack! That's awful! Now I understand why Doctor Who uses corridors so much. They can be darn creepy under the right circumstances. Reading about everyone's misadventures has got me thinking that doors are just plain evil. They lock behind you without warning, they don't have handles, they open too slowly (or not at all)...Yep, evil. I think we need to start a campaign to replace all evil doors with bead curtains and drapes. It could save lives. Could certainly save a lot of emotional stress!

I got stuck in a staircase!

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