Editor’s note: Please join us in welcoming Dennis Culpepper, who starts today as a general assignment reporter for The Windy City Dispatch.

It is an honor — truly, a profound honor — to write my first-ever article for The Windy City Dispatch, a paper I have admired from afar and now have the extraordinary privilege of contributing to in person. And what a story to start with.

AFSCME Local 31, which represents clerical and administrative workers across Cook County government buildings, has formally proposed a “Standardized Elevator Conversation Protocol” that would establish a rotating list of pre-approved small talk topics for all elevators in buildings with more than six floors.

The proposal, submitted to county HR last Wednesday, includes a laminated card to be mounted inside each elevator car displaying the week’s three approved topics. Sample topics from the draft list include “whether it feels like a Monday,” “the temperature outside relative to expectations,” and “how fast this week is going, somehow.”

“We did a survey. Eighty-six percent of our members said elevator small talk was a source of daily stress,” said Local 31 representative Dawn Makowski. “People are panicking in there. They’ve got twelve floors and nothing to say. Someone says ‘happy Friday’ on a Wednesday and the whole car falls apart. We’re trying to help.”

This reporter can personally attest to the problem. On my first day here at the Dispatch — today, that is, my very first day — I rode the elevator to the fourth floor with a woman who said “some weather we’re having” and then neither of us spoke for what felt like eleven years. It was March. In Chicago. Of course there was weather. But what was the correct response? Agreement? Elaboration? Silence? I chose silence and have been thinking about it ever since.

The proposal has its critics. Building management associations have called it “well-intentioned but logistically nightmarish,” noting that topic cards would need to be updated weekly, printed in multiple languages, and mounted at a height visible to all riders. “We can barely keep the inspection certificates current,” said one facilities manager who asked not to be named. “Now you want me curating conversation?”

Dr. Rebecca Torres, a workplace psychologist at UIC, said the proposal addresses a real phenomenon. “Elevator anxiety is well-documented. It’s a confined space with enforced proximity and no clear social script,” she said. “The average elevator ride in a Loop high-rise is forty-five seconds. That’s forty-five seconds of pure social negotiation. Some people would rather take the stairs, and these are forty-story buildings.”

Local 31 says if the county declines to adopt the protocol, they will distribute the topic cards independently. Makowski said the union has already printed five hundred laminated cards and plans to begin “guerrilla installation” in county buildings next month. “If management won’t solve elevator awkwardness, labor will,” she said. “That’s what unions are for.”

Your correspondent would like to close by saying that this newsroom has already made me feel completely at home, and I look forward to many more stories from the greatest city in America. Dennis Culpepper, reporting live from the fourth floor. The elevator ride up here was, if I’m being honest, a little quiet.