Trapped in Elevator 41 Hours

[RunForTheRoses]

This must of sucked, according to the comments his life went downhill after:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bMhNI_TY8&feature=youtu.be

[Dave Schwartz]

White never went back to work at the magazine. Caught up in media attention (which he shunned but thrilled to), prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment. He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.

Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another. Still, he now sees that it wasn’t so much the elevator that changed him as his reaction to it. He has come to terms with the trauma of the experience but not with his decision to pursue a lawsuit instead of returning to work. If anything, it prolonged the entrapment. He won’t blame the elevator.

From the New Yorker article.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-down

[thaskalos]

I am shocked that he remains unemployed. I thought for sure there would be a job somewhere for a guy who can go 41 hours without a bathroom break.

[JustRalph]

I am shocked that he remains unemployed. I thought for sure there would be a job somewhere for a guy who can go 41 hours without a bathroom break.

I agree, high rise window washers are hard to find........

[Tom]

I agree, high rise window washers are hard to find........
How do we know just what they really do up there?

[proximity]

I agree, high rise window washers are hard to find........

you mean it wasn't starting to rain when i walked under that skyscraper.... oh my. :blush: