曼哈顿地铁电梯操作员John Petruzzi的办公室看上去还不赖：办公室有一扇窗户，还能上网，墙上挂了一些艺术画。
　　Petruzzi在曼哈顿第190号街区地铁站内的120号电梯里工作。他每天下午2点上班，一天需要跟着电梯上上下下走上8英里：上下分别走140英尺，一天要上下几百个来回。
　　电梯操作员本是个不错的差事，一个全职电梯操作员曾经令人羡慕。不过随着自动控制系统的引用和预算的削减，电梯操作员日渐减少，如今全职的操作员所剩无几，其中绝大部分在曼哈顿北部的地铁站里工作。
　　电梯操作员工作时禁止携带收音机、报纸、书籍、便携式武器；植物、相框和各种节日装饰物在几年前也被城市交通局规定禁止被操作员带入电梯。
　　Petruzzi今年51岁，一脸和气，长着络腮胡子，他每天从位于Poconos的家来到工作地点，不过他很喜欢他的工作。他说：“在电梯里，你认识了这个街区的所有人。”
　　Petruzzi每天下午都用微笑迎接来往的乘客。
　　曼哈顿的地铁系统中有上百部电梯，其中只有曼哈顿北部的几部是作为地铁站的唯一入口而存在的，这些电梯使用寿命长达一个世纪，期间它们的上下运行都由人工控制。
　　如今，电梯操作员们每小时的薪水为23美元，他们的工作只是在自动化程度极高的电梯中按几个按钮而已，不过他们依然有压力，因为在、远离地面的、仿佛与世隔绝的地铁站里确保电梯安全也不是一件轻松的事儿。
　　在上世纪70年代，曼阿顿交通局试图取消电梯操作员的职位，因为那时地铁的自动化程度已经越来越高，不过当地的政治家通过立法保留了这一职位。2003年，由于预算削减，交通局成功削减了地铁操作员的职位，使每座地铁站只保留一名操作员。
　　华盛顿的Elizabeth Lorris Ritter一直赞成保留电梯操作员的职位，他说:”操作员们并不把他们的工作当成享受，而是当成公共安全去对待，人们更愿意做人工控制的电梯。”
　　所有电梯操作员之前都在交通局的其他职位工作，后来因为身体原因被调为电梯操作员。他们坐在电梯的一个角落里，被一个黄色塑料隔离墙隔开，一般都配有一把带垫子的椅子、一个取暖器（冬天用）和一个电扇（夏天用）。很多操作员自带除臭剂和垃圾桶。
　　在上班高峰期，电梯操作员都会指挥人群进出电梯，超载时就让一些人出去，并为后上的人开门。
　　操作员们工作时不许看书、听广播，不过很多都带报纸，或者一本《圣经》，也有的带随身听。一位操作员说：“没音乐我就干不了活。”所有操作员接受采访时都采用匿名，免得监管人员因为携待不该带的东西处罚他们。
　　电梯操作员并不在乎他们工作的乏味性，还有他们的朋友对这项工作的好奇。Petruzzi说：“我觉得现在很好。这份工作不适合那些患幽闭恐惧症的人干。”
　　电梯操作员的工作环境也有区别。他们都喜欢那种宽敞的、厢内挂着油画且冬暖夏凉的电梯。
　　曼哈顿最深的地铁是一号线，那里的电梯操作员说，在7月份，电梯里挤满了20多个流着臭汗的人时，能把人热死。
　　地铁一号线的几台电梯位于168号、181号和191号站台，它们似乎比地铁还要繁忙，当然也出过问题：4月初，181号站的电梯就困住了27名乘客。
每当一台电梯在地铁站被装好，人们就希望能为其配一名电梯操作员。
　　Dan Levinson Wilk教授说：“电梯操作员非常重要，他们会给人们带来安全感和人性化。”

The Subway’s Elevator Operators, a Reassuring Amenity of Another Era

　　John Petruzzi’s office is, all things considered, not a terribly unpleasant place to work. It could use a window, and an Internet connection might be nice, but colorful art hangs on the walls, and the subway access is unbeatable.
　　Mr. Petruzzi operates Elevator 120 in the 190th Street subway station in Manhattan. He reports to his desk, a stack of three milk crates, at 2 p.m. and proceeds to travel more than eight vertical miles — 140 feet up, 140 feet down, hundreds of times a day — before clocking out.
　　The subway elevator operator is at once an amenity and a relic, a last gasp of the full-service subway era when a touch of Park Avenue class permeated the city’s prosaic subterranean world. The twin tides of automation and budget cuts have thinned the operators’ ranks; today, only a few full-time attendants remain, all of whom work in five deep-bore subway stations nestled inside the alpine reaches of northern Manhattan.
　　Radios, newspapers and books, go-to weapons against boredom, are forbidden, and personal touches like plants, picture frames and holiday decorations were banned years ago, deemed fire hazards by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
　　But Mr. Petruzzi, 51, an affable, bearded man who commutes daily to Washington Heights from his home in the Poconos, said he enjoyed his work. “You get to know all the people in the neighborhood,” he said the other day, receiving smiles and greetings from a carload of afternoon commuters.
　　There are hundreds of elevators in the subway system, but only a few, like those in Upper Manhattan, serve as the primary or only means of access to a train platform. These elevators have been in use since some of the stations opened nearly a century ago, when the lifts were manually operated, with a turning handle to control ascent and descent.
　　Today, attendants, who earn $23 an hour, are responsible for little more than pressing a few buttons on the automatic elevator’s console. But they have endured because of neighborhood efforts to retain a reassuring presence inside deep stations that can seem isolated or ominous.
　　he transportation authority tried to eliminate the attendants in the 1970s, when the elevators were made automatic, but local politicians helped enact a state law requiring the operators to stay. In 2003, amid a budget crunch, the authority successfully reduced the number by limiting each station to a single staffed elevator.
　　“People who take the elevators all the time don’t see it as a luxury,” said Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, a Washington Heights community advocate who has led neighborhood efforts to retain the operators. “They view it as public safety. You will see people wait for the manned car.”
　　All of the attendants once held more traditional positions in the transit agency, but were assigned to elevator duty for medical reasons.
　　They are relegated to a single corner of each elevator, cordoned off by yellow plastic barriers. Certain items come standard: a cushioned chair, a space heater in the winter, a personal fan in the summer. Most of the operators bring their own deodorizer sprays and trash bins.
　　At peak hours, the attendants act as a form of crowd control, waving off passengers from too-packed cars and holding the doors for stragglers.
　　Despite the rules against reading and radios, most operators keep newspapers around, and one kept a Bible that he stored in his desk. Music floats from handheld radios or iPods hooked up to speakers. “I don’t know if I could do this job without the music,” confided one operator, who, like nearly all the attendants interviewed for this article, asked for anonymity to avoid retribution from superiors.
　　Most attendants said they did not mind the monotony of their workday, and they shrug off strange looks from friends who are curious about their job. “It doesn’t really bother me,” Mr. Petruzzi said. “Some people get claustrophobic, so it’s not for them.”
　　Not all subway elevators are created equal. Attendants prefer the more spacious elevators at the A train stations, which are decorated with paintings from local artists and are cooler in the summer.
　　Along the No. 1 line, the deepest in the system, the elevators can be scorching, said one operator, recalling brutal July rides in a car packed with two dozen sweaty bodies.
　　The No. 1 train elevators — with access to the platforms at the 168th, 181st and 191st Street stations,tend to be busier than their A train counterparts. They also have a greater tendency to break down: 27 passengers were trapped on a stalled elevator at 181st Street in an hourlong ordeal earlier this month that was captured on video and widely viewed on the Internet. (The culprit was a newly installed rope that had stretched out.)
　　When an elevator does stall, passengers often say they were grateful to have had an attendant onboard. 
　　“Elevator operators have always been important for creating a sense of safety, a sense of community, ” said Dan Levinson Wilk, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology who has studied the history of elevators. “That’s the role elevator operators play in the subway now.”
　　Professor Wilk said the attendants were viewed positively by subway riders. Most of the time, he said, “interactions between employees and the public don’t really lead to great feelings about quality of service.”