claymitchell.net

I work on the 10th floor of the Charlotte Plaza building. I have come to believe that this building has the worst elevator system on the planet and is probably the worst office building in uptown Charlotte. I had previously believe that the International Trade Center held this title, as it was commonly referred to as the ghetto of uptown Charlotte office buildings. But I was wrong. In the time since January 18th, 2008, I have experienced the following problems with the elevators that service floors 2 through 15:

• General slowness
• Random stops
• Floors being randomly highlighted as destinations; for example, one particular elevator will show 13 as a destination even though it is going down from the 10th floor
• Unresponsiveness – I’ve gotten on an elevator on the 2nd floor, pressed #10 and it just sits there.
• Inaccurate direction indicators; think that elevator is going up? Wrong.
• Summon lights randomly turning off
• Simply not working

Two examples stand out in my mind. One day we could not get an elevator to arrive at our floor that was going down. In a span of 10 minutes, we saw half a dozen going up, while none ever went down. Becoming fed up up, I eventually got on an elevator that was going up. Turns out the light was wrong, this one was headed downwards.

Just today, I walked over and pressed the down button. Nothing happened. I pressed the up button. No response. I sat there for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen, pressing down or up every 30 seconds or so. Nearly having given up, the down button suddenly lights up and an elevator arrives.

Argh.

Went through the standard process of meeting 2000 new people, many of whose names I will not remember and be forced to undergo some sort of awkward “have you met so and so” and I’ll say no and it will actually be somebody I’ve met.

All things considered things went fairly well. My only complaint is that they didn’t give me a laptop (boo) and they use an old version of Lotus Notes. I’m pretty confident this is the worst mainstream software ever.

Looks like I’ll finally be starting a new job with Wachovia as a architect/developer on 01/14/2008. They’ll probably give me some obscure title and stick me in a cubicle, but here is to hoping for an office and a title w/ “Architect” in it. After years of calling Bank of America “The Bank” now I’ll be referring to the fellows on the other side of Trade St, as “The Bank”.