07 August, 2008

Why Doesn’t This Ever Happen in My Office

It sounds like the start of a joke doesn’t it: how many cheerleaders can you fit in a lift? Well, some bright sparks in the home of the bright spark, Texas, decided to try and answer that question in an experiment of Newton-esque importance. For those of you here purely for the result by the way, I’ll get it out of the way now: 26 cheerleaders is apparently the most you can fit in a lift.

Anyway, the heroic girls, aged dangerously between 14 and17, managed to get into the lift on Tuesday night at the couldn’t-be-more-appropriately-named Jester Residence Hall on the University of Texas campus. After taking deep breaths, and possibly removing all semblance of clothing to save space, they managed to close the lift doors and descend to the first floor, but when they touched down the doors jammed, sending the visionary young ladies into a frenzied mass of braces and pom-poms. After one of the cheerleaders eventually contacted the outside world by calling from a mobile phone, repairmen were despatched to release them. However, it took 25 minutes to open the door, and in the meantime one girl fainted and had to be treated in hospital. Can you imagine the look on the repairman’s face when his mundane day of electrical faults and broken taps was interrupted by jimmying open a lift door to find 26 teenage cheerleaders? JACKPOT!

Predictably though the university authorities overseeing the cheerleading camp failed to see the funny side: “It's dangerous actually,” said po-faced Rhonda Weldon, the university police spokeswoman. “They're lucky that that's all that happened. Take the sign seriously,” was her valuable advice. “There are signs everywhere: no more than 15 people or 3,000 pounds.” Cheer up love!

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