Don't let me loose in a lift...

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Rock band Aerosmith sang about Love In An Elevator. All I found in one last week was embarrassment and recrimination. Here's what happened... Last Thursday I had a speaking gig. Before I left my home town I decided to get a haircut. Yes, even us baldies need to do that from time to time and my last time had been on 28 December so my surviving bits were looking a bit shaggy. After that I had an hour-long bus journey ahead of me so I thought it might be a good idea to visit the toilets on the fourth floor of a nearby department store before I set off. There were four of us waiting for the lift: myself, an old lady and a young man accompanied by his mother or carer. He proudly showed off his new watch and we admired it. It was all very friendly. The lift set off and, seemingly seconds later, the doors opened. There were two ladies waiting to get in, one of them accompanied by a disability assistance dog. Well, it was going to be a tight sqeeze but I stepped back... Then all hell broke loose. The lift doors closed immediately and suddenly we were heading back to the ground floor. Apparently we had reached the top much quicker than I had expected. Those weren't extra passengers on an intermediate floor, they had been at the top, waiting for us to get out. And when I had moved back for them, my rucksack had hit the buttons to shut the doors and go all the way back down, I have to say the journey back down seemed to take much longer, mainly due to the moaning at me, especially from the old lady. When we got the bottom I decided I didn't actually need the loo after all and I told them I'd leave them to it. They told me to get back in (I don't think they had finished moaning yet but I couldn't face any more of that, let alone a fresh volley from the two women stranded at the top, and probably from the dog as well). There used to be a slogan here: 'stairs are your friends'. It was intended to encourage unfit people to take more exercise but I can now see that it may have had other applications. Do you avoid lifts/elevators? Have you ever had an embarrassment in one?