Elevator Experience

It is a typical business-day experience to attend a meeting in a building with an elevator. Most of my business meetings are either on the ground floor of the building or if on a higher floor involves taking a set of "Cambodian stairs"*. (* "Cambodian stairs" as used here means stairs that in the same set include varying sizes of "risers" and "treads". Most Cambodian stairs have treads much smaller than the typical American tread of about 12 inches. I am going to guess that the typical Cambodian stair tread is about 6 - 8 inches. And while the typical American stair riser would be about 7 inches Cambodian stairs are about 10 inches until you get close to the bottom or top of the stairs and then there are adjustments made and sometimes the riser is 1 -2 inches - or just enough to trip you.)


But today I went to a meeting in a building with an elevator and my meeting was on floor 18 (near the top of the building). Unfortunately, the meeting ended right at noon. Now, Cambodians are very serious about lunch. Lunches here are not something you have in your office or do quickly; they are not even your typical 1 hour lunch, but are 1 1/2 - 2 hours and most people go home for lunch. So, at noon I was pretty much stranded on the 18th floor and waited for an elevator for about 10 minutes. When it finally arrived and I got in it made stops all the way down and by the last stop we had 18 people crammed into the elevator. Fortunately, the average size of people in Cambodia is much smaller than in America, which made this a little more comfortable. Now, you may be wondering, why wait 10 minutes and not just take the stairs. See paragraph 1.