elevator pitch

A short description of your dotcom idea, designed to sell it to an investor in the time it takes from trapping him in an elevator to getting out again. One hears tales of business ideas sold this way going on to become huge, and it is considered an essential tool if you're looking for venture capitalist funding.

For a cluster full of highly trained, easily bored redneck technicians working long hours in windowless buildings, we sure sucked at basic facilities maintenance.

Overhead lightbulbs would go dim in the office and remain so for five years. Backup tapes would moulder in a side office, victims of decreased spend on offsite archival efforts. Someone would punch a hole in the wall, and, some turnover later, somebody would finally get sick enough of it to bring in some plaster.

One building simply kept the same peeling floor tiles and battered wheelchair ramp in the unused lobby through four renovations and half a decade before someone, squeezed on budget and time, bothered to reclaim it for raised floor space.

My favorite example of this was the HIGH VOLTAGE sign on the dock's cargo elevator. It had been originally glued to the wall. Entropy waits for no fixative, and so it went through multiple sets of tacks, wads of chewing gum, varying sizes and manifestations of duct tape before simply being left propped up on the floor beside the elevator. Occasionally it was kicked into the elevator.

On my way out of the cluster, I took pity on the poor sign and packed it into Natasha. It's lived in entryways, stairwells, and pantries coast to coast since then. Surprisingly, nails through the holes drilled into the sign on manufacture, have kept the thing firmly affixed to my walls.

Friday afternoon. The buildings make for a nice postcard for a modern city, but on the inside they’re full of (office) ants. Maybe the same could be said of all us. Somewhere between these glass cages there’s a small Tapas bar and—like half the other ants—I get to sign off work at 2PM. Next week, they’ll be the ones here, enjoying a beer-heavy lunch.

Next week it’s the clásico, meaning lots of patrons wherever there’s a TV and alcohol. Pair that with the end of the semester and you can easily predict a packed joint. I hate that loudness. I’d much rather have the guys at the end of the bar. Yes they are loud, but eavesdropping them is actually interesting.

They discuss this phrase in English, elevator pitch. It’s obvious they’re drunk enough to hold such a silly conversation and sober enough to find it merely amusing. «Let’s ask old man López. One six says it doesn’t work like that.». López, I wonder, as in the giant engineering firm? It’s an open secret in this bar that their HQ is across the street, floors 14 through 20.

They must be business-type ants; engineer-types tend to scribble a lot when dealing with physics, even if they’re at the bar. Especially if they’re at the bar. Their conclusion is that yes, throwing a baseball upwards while the elevator also goes upwards must add their «speeds» together (another sign that they decided early on they didn’t like math).

The brunette’s kisses and subsequent hangover made me forget all about that, until today, two weeks later. Everybody at the crater is wondering what’s this? Where did it come from?. Maybe I should tell them, it’s an elevator and someone tried to pitch it (upwards) to prove a point.

I should ask my barber where he gets his hair cut, then go there and slowly make my way up the chain ⇐ Part of Brevity Quest 2020 (295 words)⇒ Ni picha, ni cacha, ni deja batear