I wasn’t even going to reference this story that occurred yesterday at work but the follow-up portion begs to be told. I bet another coworker around 1:30 he couldn’t finish a gallon of sweet tea by day’s end. It was a leftover gallon from our work Thanksgiving potluck last week. For those of you up north, sweet tea is one step removed from drinking pure high fructose corn syrup. Much like a Long Island Iced Tea just has a splash of coke, sweet tea has just a teeny splash of actual tea – just enough to dissipate the pounds of sugar put in for each gallon. What I’m trying to say is drinking sweet tea is enough to put a non-diabetic into hyperglycemic shock.
Let’s ignore the health reasons and stupidity behind the bet and realize that when guys bet on things, it’s usually for stupid reasons. Normally those dumb bets are made when drunk but this was a stone cold sober bet. The stakes were rather simple – I’d buy him a bag of Caribou Coffee Holiday Reindeer blend if he finished by day’s end. Another coworker also offered to get him another bag too, so while it wasn’t a huge pot at stake, he’d be getting almost $30 worth of good tasting coffee.
I’ll be damned but he actually finished the gallon of sweet tea by 3:58. He was tripping balls for a while, followed by an intense sugar high and then crashed just as quickly once his pancreas stopped pulsating like a subwoofer that’s playing the soundtrack to Saving Private Ryan when they’re storming Omaha Beach. Besides the standard “now I’ve broken the seal” trips to the bathroom as though he were out on a night on the town, he really didn’t have any bad side effects (partially to our dismay).
What makes the story memorable is what happened when he left for home. Our building is 32 stories and since we’re on the 22nd floor, we’re in a bank of elevators that only service floors 19-32. He was the only one in the elevator on the way down. Unfortunately, the elevators have been known to act up in this building from time to time. This happened to be one of those times.
It went down to the lobby but never opened up. So he pressed ‘19’ to see if he could exit back upstairs and wait for another elevator. The doors didn’t open up at 19 so he tried 20. No luck. Same results when he tried to get out on our floor. He tried a few more floors with no success and finally called security via the intercom system they have in any elevator for reasons like this.
He wound up being stuck in the elevator for about thirty minutes. It’s bad enough being trapped in a small enclosure with nothing to entertain you and not knowing when you’re actually going to get out. What makes it even “better” was that it didn’t stop the elevator from making phantom calls to floors so whenever anyone summoned an elevator from floors 19-32, his elevator went up and down and up and down but never opened the door. With a belly and bladder full of concentrated sugar, this wasn’t the best method to have him not concentrate on when his breaking point would be where he’d actually have to pee or puke in the corner. Thankfully they finally got the doors to open.
He earned his free coffee.