Elevator

It was the busiest day at work that you've had in months, maybe even years. And that doesn't mean it had been a good day. Oh no. In fact, you were almost positive that it had been the most frustrating and confusing day you'd had in a long time.

First thing that morning, you'd woken up to the phone ringing. Fortunately, it wasn't work calling. It was your best friend, calling to you from a bar somewhere, completely off her head, going on about a skunk or something. Being the friend that you were, you got up and drove to where your friend was, a bar that was an hours drive from your house, at two in the morning.
When you'd gotten there, she was sitting on the sidewalk, petting a stray cat and crying about how fluffy it was. You got her into your car and began driving when she decided that she was hungry and you had to stop at McDonald's. Which, after she had finished, she promptly threw up again.
BY the time you reached your home, it was three thirty in the morning and you had to be up at seven to get to work by eight thirty.

When you woke up again, your throat felt dry and you lips were cracking. You'd gotten up out of bed, only to find that you'd run out of coffee and forgotten to get more. Leaving you without your usual morning caffeine. You had trudged to the store to get some and rushed back, only having enough time to fix your hair, and get dressed before you had to run out the door to work, before you were late.

When you arrived at work, your boss had come in a horrible mood and was yelling at everyone. When you walked in, he had turned to you and started telling you that you were late, when really, it was only eight thirty-one.
After the long rant that you had received, someone else had come in and put a large pile of paperwork on your desk, saying it had to be done before the day was over.

At lunch time you'd walked out to go get a sandwich from the nice shop down the street from your work building. As you walked out from the shop itself, carrying your sandwich in your hands, someone bumped into you, spilling coffee all over your white shirt. Staining it completely with brown.
You ended up having to go home to get changed, leaving you no time to eat the lovely sandwich you had been so excited to eat. You arrived back at your building and sat down at your desk, seeing that the pile of work, only seemed to get bigger.

You thought that nothing could go wrong for the rest of your day, your philosophy being that if the morning was bad, the afternoon would make up for it. The afternoon would repair the day.

No.

You only wished that was the case. The afternoon was filled with awkward encounters, annoying workmates, spillages. The mail room had even been set on fire somehow and the bathrooms decided to flood themselves.
Who had to fix that?
You.

It almost felt as if the world was testing you for something. As if some great entity was looking down at you and laughing evilly.

At the end of the day, after finishing the mountain of paperwork and mopping up the bathroom and dealing with the fire department. You gathered your things, unplugging your phone from where it was charging, taking your jacket from the back of your chair. Before anyone else could bother your, or ask you to do something else, you ran to the elevator. As you got in, you were joined by a few people. You recognized a most of them. There was Jim, from I.T., Janice from the west side, Bill and Greg, who worked not too far away from you. There was West the janitor, and Karen the night guard. But there was one man you didn't know.

And he was the first one to speak.

"So, I bet you've been wondering why I've gathered you here."

And then the elevator stopped.