"Forty minutes? You were on an elevator for forty minutes?"



"Yeah, I know, I got my cloaca chewed out by my boss when I finally got into the office."



"Why in the name of the spheres did you end up in an elevator for forty minutes?"



"Well, I get into the elevator, and before you know it, the humans start piling in. I've got nothing against them, but I wanted to tell them 'hey, this is my stop', but I couldn't do that because I don't have a mouth and they don't communicate through telepathy."



"Why didn't you just point it out to them?"



"It was shoulder to shoulder! Arms like ours and I'd give someone a concussion trying to scratch my head in that thing! And I swear, every time one left, another one came in. It was awful. Nobody asked me if it was my stop, nobody said a word to me!"



"So how did you get out?"



"Crowd thinned out. Finally. Managed to wedge myself in the corner with the buttons and hit my floor. And you probably heard the rest when I came in. Say, how do you get to your desk in the morning, anyway?"



"Me? I take the stairs."