Pope Francis stuck in Vatican elevator, rescued by firemen

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This will sound like the beginning of a joke to some and a very serious matter to others. Which group you fall into probably depends on if you’ve ever been stuck in an elevator.
 
LOL I have been stuck in several elevators. And I also have spend time in Italy where a working elevator is a matter of perception.

I mean it isn’t Paul and a donkey, but it can definitely be an opportunity for a little prayer in an otherwise hectic day.

That being said. Joke time!

Francis in elevator—
God— “Where to?”

Francis in Elevator to himself " Nobody ever pushes the 13 button. Look at it. It is completely unused. Superstitious fools! Today, I push the button!"

Francis in elevator *** Hits emergency stop button
“Ok Francis you can do this… Breathe… I mean why do I have a phobia of speaking in front of people? I’m the Pope!.. Breathe Breathe!!!”

Hopefully he didn’t watch the 2010 M night Shyamalan movie “Devil” in which a group of people are trapped in an elevator and one of them is the devil. But if he did, at least he came out victorious.
 
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13 isn’t considered bad luck in Italy except for seating at the table.
 
Would you like to substitute 6 then? I’ll let you edit the jokes.

You aren’t THAT person at parties are you?
 
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DisorientingSneeze said:
Which group you fall into probably depends on if you’ve ever been stuck in an elevator.
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Back early in my working career I was an environmental chemist and was working on a project to assess pulp mill sulphur emissions. We were working late on a Sunday night trying to get the project finished, in a digester building. This is a building equivalent to about a 10 story office building in height, holding great big vessels in which the wood chips were cooked into pulp. The distance between floors was quite large, maybe 3 or 4 floors in a space that would contain 10 in an office or apartment block.

Anyway, the elevator died between floors. So we rang the alarm bell. And rang. And rang. Nobody came. No phone or anything, and yelling would have been futile over the noise of the place. Finally we opened the trap door in the roof, my colleague boosted me up, and I pulled him up, and we went up the ladder rungs in the shaft up to the next floor, a long way up. We managed to pry the door open and go to the operations room. We asked “didn’t you hear us ring the bell”? The response was “yeah people fool with that thing all the time”.

I’m still here but the mill is long gone…
 
That’s an amazing story! Must have felt like you were living in an action movie!
 
The best elevator story I have is when I was working in some snazzy-looking office building in an upscale part of DC, that had an embassy on one side and some condos reportedly occupied by Obama’s personal friends on the other, but this building itself had an ongoing rat problem (they would run across desks, across corridors, into file rooms etc) and dodgy elevators. One time I went in to work in the evening on a holiday weekend when no one else was around, and when I went to leave the elevator got stuck several feet off the lobby floor, with the doors shut. I knew from past experience that the emergency call button rang the phone of some guy who was at home rather than in the building and it would take him at least an hour or more to get there and get me out of this closed up elevator, so I pried the doors open with my hands, threw my briefbag out into the lobby, and then jumped several feet down from the elevator into the lobby. I know that was very dangerous and I could have been killed if I’d slipped and fallen down the shaft or if the elevator moved while I was jumping, but I decided to live dangerously and all was well. I am extremely glad that I found a new job shortly thereafter and don’t have to deal with that elevator any more, among other things.
 
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Oh gosh, I thought you were setting it up that a rat was involved somehow with you being stuck in an elevator.

Glad that wasn’t the case, and that you weren’t hurt.
 
When I was in high school, I was doing homework in the cafeteria one afternoon, during a spare period. I was facing away from the kitchen area when another kid said “hey, FIRE”! I turned and sure enough flames were shooting out from under the steel roll-up curtain of the serving area. I turned back to continue my homework when it finally clicked. The kitchen was on FIRE. We all ran out in a panic, and a kid knocked on the door of the class in front of the caf and yelled to the prof that the caf was on fire. The prof calmly told the kid to pull the alarm, which he did.

But the alarm didn’t go off. They were building an extension to the school and the alarm had been switched off to extend its wiring into the new wing. Word finally got around to the principal’s office, and he broadcast over the PA calmly saying “please evacuate the school, it seems there is a fire in the cafeteria.”

Nobody believed him until they exited the school, saw the column of black smoke, and saw the fire trucks racing towards the school.

Turns out someone had left the fryer on, and the oil caught alight. The kitchen was toast (thinking about you colleague’s toast here). Fortunately it was confined to the kitchen, but it was cold sandwiches for everyone for several weeks afterwards, in those pre-microwave oven days.
 
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My college dorm, which was 6 stories tall with 4 suites on each floor, had so many false fire alarms and accidental fire alarms from people doing stuff like burning toast in a toaster when I lived there, that we all pretty much ignored them. Unfortunately, one time it was a real fire, and my poor roommate who was the resident assistant for the dorm and had to respond to every fire alarm ended up running six flights up and down the dorm to tell everybody it was fo’ real and get out.
 
Honestly, I don’t like elevators. I’ll usually take the stairs and beat the elevator :running_man: ⚡
 
Cruciferi said:
Honestly, I don’t like elevators. I’ll usually take the stairs and beat the elevator
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I’m the same. Almost a phobia. I mean if we’re talking a 25 story climb, maybe, but I used to work on the 5th floor of an office building, and would always use the stairs. It helped cardio fitness as well. It was part of my winter training for my summer cycling!
Tis_Bearself said:
My college dorm, which was 6 stories tall with 4 suites on each floor, had so many false fire alarms and accidental fire alarms from people doing stuff like burning toast in a toaster when I lived there, that we all pretty much ignored them. Unfortunately, one time it was a real fire, and my poor roommate who was the resident assistant for the dorm and had to respond to every fire alarm ended up running six flights up and down the dorm to tell everybody it was fo’ real and get out.
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Sounds like dorm life where I went to university as well. And the elevator was always on the fritz because the kids were fooling with it. My room was on the 4th floor; I didn’t trust the elevator, so always hoofed it up the stairs.
 
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OraLabora said:
Sounds like dorm life where I went to university as well. And the elevator was always on the fritz because the kids were fooling with it. My room was on the 4th floor; I didn’t trust the elevator, so always hoofed it up the stairs.
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I can’t remember if we even had an elevator. There might have been one that we used when moving in but I seem to recall it was broken almost all the time. The building also did not have air conditioning in those days. What a dump!

I was on the fifth floor and would climb up and down the stairs about four or five times a day…also a very huge flight of stairs that led from main campus up the hill with the dorms. I did not need to go to the gym in those days, that’s for sure.
 
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I remember when I was a kid my parents had taught me to never, ever, use the elevator alone (we lived in a block of flats) and presented me such horror stories as to what may happen if I get stuck in it that made using the elevator when I was coming home from school a real adventure (of course I was using it 😛) because I didn’t know what would be worse: be stuck in it or run into my parents as I was getting out of it, a living proof I wasn’t always 😇 and ruin my reputation in front of them!
 
Reminds me of a incident when I was about 5 years old. I was strictly forbidden from crossing the street. But one day I chased a ball across the street only to realize the huge transgression I had just made, when I was on the other side. I sat there crying for a while until a neighbour lady came out to see what was wrong. I didn’t want to make the same transgression twice! So I sat there paralyzed with fear about the consequences of repeating my crime by crossing back to my side of the street.

Fortunately the nice lady helped me back across the street. I don’t remember what my mother’s reaction was! I was too young for confession at that point!

It’s funny the weird things that stick in our memories. This happened maybe 56 or so years ago.
 
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