Too tipsy with carrot cake shots to navigate the super-long escalators, I stumbled to the Woodley Park Metro elevator. Jabbing the big button that looks right in my blurry gaze, I had a double-take when the elevator spoke.

“Can I help you?”

Whoa! That’s not the voice of god I hear in my head, so it must be somebody on a speaker. That’s when I realized I’d pressed the Panic Button instead of the Elevator Down button. Sobering up, I looked closely at the panel just to see how I could’ve been so clumsy.

Ah, but I wasn’t clumsy. It was the bad user interface design of the elevator panel that had me hearing god too late on a Tuesday night. Next time, less shots, more straight vodka. Then I’ll really have fun fondling the Woodley Park elevator panel.