In a troubling development, it appears that a bout of elevator small talk between Laura Alberts and David Higgins is now going to have to extend all the way to the office parking garage.

According to sources present, the incident began when David chose to walk in the same direction as Laura after they exited the elevator and departed their office building this evening.

“The small talk in the elevator I can handle,” Laura tells us. “I was not, however, prepared to stretch that conversation all the way to my car.”

The small talk, which began with an expression of gratitude for the fast approaching weekend, quickly showed signs of strain before the mutual parking garage destination even became apparent.

“It’s Thursday,” Laura tells us. “Dave got on the elevator and said, ‘Looking forward to the weekend?’, and I said, ‘You bet’. That was about all I had, and we weren’t even at the first floor yet.”

“If I had known he was going the same way as me, I would have peeled off and pretended to go to the bathroom or something.”

By the time they walked all the way down to level 8 of Parking Garage B, their conversation had turned to gentle speculation about why escalators were so often out of service.

“We were out of topics,” Laura tells us. “He seemed just as distressed as I was.”

Despite the uncomfortable ordeal, she assures us she had learned a valuable lesson about connecting with her co-workers.

“From now on,” she tells us, “I’m taking the stairs.”