Have you ever used the stairs in Suria KLCC?
I have and it wasn’t a pretty experience.
I thought the elevators were too slow with lazy people using it just to get a floor up or down. I can’t stand that kind of people. Meanwhile the escalators were too far away and too many people using it. As usual, people hog the path. I was in a slight hurry because I was beginning to restless with the mall. But before that, I wanted to go down two floors.
With jumping off the floor not a viable option — I certainly intended to keep my legs intact — I looked around for an alternative and there, I saw a sign announcing to the world of a stairwell nearby. I was just 10 or 20 meters away from me and I thought, I could use the exercise and pace a bit.
As I got into the stairwell, there was something on my mind. I don’t remember what was it but I wanted to go out of the stairwell for a moment. As it turned out, I was in Hotel California. “You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!”
I could go pass through the door into the stairwell but I could not get out. The door could only be opened from the outside but not from the inside.
After applying whatever force I could muster, I gave up and went down one story to try its door. The situation remained the same: I could not get out.
I started to panic but I looked around again and I saw a sign: exit, go down. I needed to go down the the ground level to exit the stairwell. Great design folks!
A stairwell with only one exit! What if the ground floor was on fire? There is no common sense in it.
But I did not want to go to the ground floor. I wanted to go somewhere else.
There was a sense of relief when I saw a janitor cleaning the stairs. I asked him how do I get out there. It turned out, he couldn’t speak English, or Malay. He was a foreigner. Okay. Creepy. This started to feel like some horror movie. I gave on him and started to bang on that level’s door.
“Somebody, open up, please”.
Weird enough, somebody opened it. Another janitor fortunately for me was working just behind the door. He opened it to check out the commotion I caused.
And I was free.