Unfiltered Story #325713

This was told to me by my dentist, who had been hanging around his office building since he was a child (because his father had also been a dentist.)

It’s the depth of the 1930’s Depression.
The office building has a fleet of elevators, each of which has to be run by an “elevator operator” (no automatic self-service elevators there then.)

The “dispatcher”, that is, the manager of the elevator operators, fires all of the operators, and hires them back at a lower pay rate. Obviously, they are all very angry, but they have to accept it because there are no other jobs available in town.
*Note: my dentist had himself been a part-time elevator operator in his teenage years.

In the 1960s, my dentist ran into one of the old operators. They get to talking about old times. And the subject of the dispatcher comes up.

Other Operator: What ever happened to that [string of curse words] dispatcher?
Dentist: Oh, he died, some years back.
Other Operator: Dead?! Good! [vulgar insult!] Come, I buy you beer to celebrate!
*So they went to the nearby bar and hoisted a glass of beer to the dispatcher’s death!