double shift

The elevator operator is tired. Of using the third person, mostly, although I did work a double shift last night.
A double shift is when your relief calls in sick, and you elect to stay to cover his shift. Otherwise, there would be no one to run the elevator, and some number of people in the double digits would be stranded in their multi-million dollar apartments, or else reduced to using the fire stairs, the exit doors to which are rigged with fire alarms. If tripped unattended, these alarms could spread panic on the Upper Best Side. That simply wouldn’t do.
So I went to work at 3:30 in the afternoon yesterday, and I did not leave work until 7:30 this morning. Now that would be an ordeal if I were working on an assembly line building automobiles, but elevator operation is all about conserving physical energy and remaining at the ready for the chirp of the elevator call. Calls like these are infrequent on Saturday nights, and when they do happen, the caller is nine-times-out-of-ten in a mood of Saturday night jollity and disinclined to notice the elevator operator’s irritation at having been woken from a deep nap.
Last night I could not nap. I dognapped, as distinguished from catnapping by unpleasant waking dreams, which in dogs are manifested by twitching limbs and loud snuffling, but in elevator operators are manifested as feelings of vertigo and acute social inferiority. That and there was no comfortable place to recline.
The Co-Op Board is right to decline to provide facilities on which the doormen, elevator operators, and midnight porter/doorman/elevator-operators might make themselves too comfortable. We are here to do a job, and excessively comfortable seating could very easily distract from the job at hand, and could lead, in some cases, to an overly nonchalant attitude toward the tasks with which we are charged. This was no great comfort to me, however, at 4:00 o’clock this morning as I tried to rest myself against the knowledge that I had to return to work at 3:00 this afternoon. I am making a note to myself that if ever I am reassigned to the midnight shift for a period of longer than a few days, I will invest in a folding camp cot.
The papers came at 6 or so- distributing them took a few minutes, and my relief arrived at 7:15. Home by 8:30, I was pleased to find a Heineken in the fridge, and I had achieved a deep and relaxed slumber by 9.
At eleven o’clock, the music downstairs started. Some music can be heard with the ears only, as from a small radio across the room, or in the distance. At other times, music can be felt in the crown of one’s head and at the finger tips, and tingling on whatever skin is bare to it. Other music is so dense, so bassly impactful, that one can feel it in the liver and in the spleen, until finally, involuntarily, one’s heart is forced to beat in time to it. The third category is the one into which my neighbors, seduced by the modern technology of Big Bass Sound, have pushed their music. I do not know what the melody lines sound like- the melodies are obscured by the walls, and my floor, which in all fairness is their ceiling. I would have to guess by the swooping basslines and 1-5-7 progressions that the music is some sort of folk music; in fact my best guess is that the music is of the Northern Mexican ranchera variety.
I like this music. When it is performed on the L train, I usually put a dollar in the passed black Stetson. My limited Spanish allows me to discern the narratives in the songs encompassing beautiful and universal themes of love and loss, of yearning and pathos, and of triumph and tragedy. What I do not like is the perversion that is made of this music by the Bass Boost and the rhythmic semi-melodic cannon fire which makes sleep impossible. I have talked to the neighbors, but my Spanish is too poor to make any sense of the situation beyond repeated and pathetic begging to bajar el “bass”. Any stereo that powerful must have a graphic equalizer. Yet I cannot make myself understood. My impression of their impression is that I am a cranky and cantankerous spoilsport who hypocritically enjoys loud music himself. I would give a demonstration of the use of the graphics equalizer in increasing one’s enjoyment of the pleasures of melody while reducing the gut-punching impact of Bass Boost, but I fear my efforts would be met by by-now deaf ears. No doubt.
So, here I am. It is 9 o’clock, and with the help of a thermos full of strong black coffee, I will make it through to 11:30, at which time I will be relieved of my duties in elevator operation and make my way home. I do not have to come back here till Thursday.