The lawyer clutches his papers, ready to spring out the door and race to his office the minute William Flood, an elevator operator at the Century Building on Wells Street, pulls back the gate and opens the elevator door.
"That guy's gonna die running to court," Flood said, smiling and shaking his head as the lawyer hurried down the hallway. "He runs through the halls timing himself on how long it takes to get from here to the courthouse."
Flood would know. He knows pretty much all the inner workings of the building at 230 W. Wells St., where he has been an elevator operator for about 6 1/2 years.
Flood's is somewhat of a dying business, at least here in Milwaukee. Neither he nor Michael Mackintosh, one of the Century Building's owners, knows of any other buildings in the city that employ elevator operators. But that's not the case in other cities, said Mackintosh, who grew up in New York City.
Many apartment buildings in New York City still have elevator operators, as do buildings in Chicago, Mackintosh said.
"They serve a dual purpose," he said. "They know who should be here and who shouldn't. A lot of the women who work in the building feel safer knowing that these guys are here."
Flood estimates about 300 people work in the building, which houses organizations such as Wisconsin Correctional Services and Legal Action of Wisconsin. Of those 300 people, Flood says he knows about 90 percent of them by first name.
And they know his first name, too.
"Bill does a wonderful job," said one passenger as he stepped off the elevator.
Elevator operation at the Century Building is divided into two shifts. Flood works the first shift -- 6 a.m.-1 p.m. Then Jim Wodky, who has been an elevator operator in the Century Building for about nine years, works the second shift, which ends at 8 p.m. Wodky, too, says he knows the first names of most of the people who work in the building.
"In most jobs, you can't talk or laugh with your fellow employees or else you get in trouble. But here it's a prerequisite to be able to laugh and joke with people," Wodky said.
Both men said the elevator is busy most of the day, with peak usage in the morning, at lunch and around 5 p.m. Neither of the men minds the ups and downs of each day in the elevator, which can hold up to 3,000 pounds. While waiting for passengers, Wodky finds the time to read two newspapers a day -- the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune.
"I'm pretty well-informed on just about anything," Wodky said.
That includes knowing what the folks in the building are up to. He knew that the woman who got on the elevator with a bundle of newspapers in her arms had spent a couple days looking for a dumpster for them. And he was able to tell another passenger that, yes, mail already had been picked up that day.
Flood says he'll quit the day he dreams about being trapped in an elevator. That really happened to Flood and Wodky, and it wasn't a dream. But since the doors open and close manually and the elevator stopped each time about half-way past a floor, they both were able to climb out.
Flood has manned the elevator for a few local celebs -- Mayor John Norquist and Senator Ed Garvey. Wodky has given rides to dogs, plants and lots of bikes. But neither has seen anything really unusual in their respective tenures as elevator operators, they said.
"It's more just seeing the people who ride everyday, seeing how they act and what they do," Flood said. "It's not really anything I can explain. You'd just have to see it."
Like the interactions between the hurried lawyer and others in the building.
"Would you believe he almost ran me over again running down the steps?" a woman said to Flood as she boarded the elevator. "That's twice today. I'm safer in here."
Flood smiled. "Look both ways," he said to the woman as she got off on the first floor.
