Anybody Going Down?

Howell McMorley was mean. He was mean to his employees. He was mean to his wife. He was mean to his kids. He was mean to his neighbors, his friends, his cat, his dogs, and he was even mean to his goldfish. To everybody who knew him he was known as "McMeany."

One of his employees’ sons was in a serious vehicle accident and when notified, the employee rushed out of the office to the hospital. McMeany docked the employee a full day's pay and censured him for failure to request “Leave in Advance.”

One afternoon McMeany’s wife dropped a frying plan and splashed grease all over her arm. She was badly burned and wore a bandage around most of her right arm for about a month. As often as he could, McMeany would reach out, grab her arm, give it a good squeeze, and ask if it still hurt. Between cries of pain and tears, she reported that it did.

When his teenage daughter got her first pimple, McMeany commented to her, "Now you're going to be even uglier." The sad part was, the daughter was actually very pretty.

Anyway, I could go on and on telling you about the mean stuff he did to almost every living thing that crossed his path on a regular basis. Bottom line, he was a cruel individual.

One of his more annoying tricks was known as the Elevator Caper. McMeany owned a small, five-story building. There were four elevators, two in two separate banks. If McMeany got an on an empty elevator and you happened to be trying to catch the same elevator he'd hit the "Close Door" button. Nobody could prove it, but most employees thought he'd secretly had the “Close Door” safety features disabled, because once the button was pushed, the door closed no matter who stuck their arm out to hold. (One employee had the proof of that.).

If McMeany happened to get on an elevator that was already occupied, he immediately punched all the floor buttons that hadn't already been activated.

He was just a jerk.

One Friday McMeany got on an elevator on the fifth floor. It was the end of the workday and the elevator was packed. McMeany forced his way on (even though others had already deferred to the number of people crammed into the car) and proceeded to punch all the buttons. The doors closed amidst a general fluttering though no words were spoken.

Then a funny thing happened.

At the fourth floor, everybody except McMeany unaccountably exited the car, joining a relatively large number of people who were already waiting. And nobody got on.

McMeany, who already had his ready finger over the "Close Door" button, sort of blinked at the migration, and hopefully asked, "Anybody going down?"

His Marketing VP looked him straight in the eye and replied, "Nope. Not as far as you're going."

As McMeany was thinking that one over, the door closed. The elevator proceeded to drop down to the third floor but for some reason the doors didn't open. The car just slid right past the stop. Then the second floor. Again, no stop and no doors. Then one. No stop. Then the first parking garage, and finally the bottom, the second garage. No doors.

And the elevator kept going down, down, down.

McMeany died of a heart attack that day. He might have survived, but when the doors actually did open up about an hour later on three, nobody took the time to call 911. They just all moved to a different car. The cleaning guy finally had to call because he had to clean the elevators every Tuesday and Friday evenings, and the body was in the way.

The body was cremated and returned to Mrs. McMeany. She promptly dumped the ashes in the toilet. Then she did what most people do on a toilet and flush all the filth away together. The urn became a pot for a cactus plant that refused to grow.

McMeany? Last time we checked he was, in a sense, still alive and well (check that… maybe we should change that to “aware,” if maybe not so alive and well) in an elevator that is, we can safely assume, is still going down, and down, and down. Oh yeah. All the buttons are lit. And the screams continue.