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Darwin Awards
2007 Slush Pile

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drapery rod in elevator

2007 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

This incident did not result in serious injury or death but it came close and it’s still as funny now as it was then. Approximately 1982 I was employed as a drapery installer in Fort Worth, Texas. I had to remove an old drapery rod from an office after installing new blinds. Ordinarily this is not a problem, but this rod was about 12 to 14 feet long and was on the 4th floor of an office building. It wouldn’t fit on the elevator and I was going to take it down the stairwell. The building maintenance man who accompanied me to the office insisted that he could take it down on the elevator.

Let me interject at this point that I normally would just bend the old drapery rod in two so it would fit in the elevator then toss it into the dumpster, however this rod was very expensive cut to measure architectural aluminum with ball bearing slides. I planned to clean it up and use it in my new home, so I didn’t want to just bend it over or cut it up.

I told the maintenance man that I really didn’t mind taking it down the stair well, even though it would be a tight fit going around corners. I just didn’t see how it could fit the elevator.

He took me to the elevator and showed me that there was a trap door hatch in the ceiling of the elevator where the rod would fit up into the shaft as the elevator descended. He took the rod onto the elevator and inserted the end up through the hatch in the ceiling. He held onto the rod and I held my stepladder and toolbox and he started the elevator to the ground floor.

Everything was fine at first as the elevator started downward. Then we could hear the top end of the drapery rod scraping on something above us in the elevator shaft. Then suddenly the rod caught on some thing in the shaft and was almost pulled up and away out of the maintenance man’s hands. Instead of letting go of the rod he grabbed onto it tighter. Since the rod was stuck and the elevator was descending he was being pulled up and out of the elevator hatch. I started yelling “let go of it!” By this time he was lifted off his feet, holding onto the rod, going up through the ceiling. Before he was pulled completely out of the elevator, the rod came unstuck and he dropped back down.

I’m not sure how dumb this guy was for trying to hold on to the rod when he was disappearing up into the shaft or if he just panicked and didn’t think to let go. Maybe if I had been thinking faster, I would have tried to stop the elevator but it all happened in a few seconds. I’ve often wondered if he ever would have let go, or if he would have continued holding on while the elevator went all the way to the ground floor.

Submitted on 07/26/2007

Submitted by: tom glenn
Reference: personal account

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

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Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
In my experience most office maintenance men aren't exactly the brightest folk, and this is a perfect demonstration of that fact! He really is lucky that he wasn't seriously injured. Elevators move fairly quickly so he could have been pulled entirely through the hatch before he realized it. Thanks for a great story, Tom!


James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Not only could he have been pulled through , he could have been ground up! I hope the rod wasn't completely destroyed! :-) Thanks, Tom, that was a funny story!


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