We’ve all been in boring situations.

Mathematics exams, for example. Or being subjected to a slideshow of holiday snaps. Or wading through the 746,983 comments along the lines of ‘OMG, OMG, why r u such haters, Pete Doherty is a legend, I luv u Pete !!!!!!!1111′ that hecklerspray receives every single day.

Nothing, though, matches the sheer soul-crippling nightmare you’re about to see. Footage has only just been released of a peculiar event in 1999, in which magazine writer Nicholas White popped out of his high-storey New York office for a cigarette. He took the elevator. It stopped. And he was stuck.

For forty hours.

Want to see that condensed into three minutes? Hell – we don’t care if you do or not. Here it is anyway.