Out Of Order

When I came back from holiday last week, this elevator was proudly displaying a typical Denglisch sign :- Defekt - Out of Order.  Odd mixture of German & English, given that German has the very serviceable "Außer Betrieb" for "out of order".

Today it has been out of order for 2 weeks.  And everyone in our building received an E-Mail saying that it would be repaired... in 3 weeks.  The reason being that only 3 nuns, who must be over the age of 95, at a specific Carmelite convent know the secret of the part that needs to be produced to make the Holy Elevator run again.  Sister Boom-Boom is 94 and her birthday is in 2 and a half weeks.  When she gets her Birthday present, then we can get the part that makes our elevator work again.

My explanation is every bit as plausible as the one from our building management team which was "Because".

As a result people have been coming up with Memes and sticking them on the elevator doors.  The ubiquitous Sean Bean ones, the "Fahrstuhl des Grauens" is something like "Elevator of Horror" but the one that I liked best is the "Niemand hat die Absicht, einen Aufzug zu reparieren".
It means "No-one has the intention to repair the lift".

Why do I like it?  Well, it's a corruption of a quote from Walter Ulbricht.  You remember, he was First Secretary Of The Job Title That Went On For Pages.  Or rather he was the first bloke in Charge of the old DDR (East Germany).  He was succeeded by Erich Honecker.

Anyway it was Walter who said that  "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten"   or "No-one has the intention to build a wall".  2 months later they started to build a wall in Berlin.  You may have heard of it. 

So it was a politically accurate answer - there was no "intention".  There was, however, a fully developed plan.  Completely different things.

At any rate it gave me a chance to digress from my usual riff of working day nonsense.