By Wailin Wong | Chicago
office workers have spent a collective 12.2 years trapped in an
elevator or waiting for one in the last 12 months, technology company
IBM said in a new survey released today.

One of the questions asked respondents if they’ve gotten stuck in an
elevator in the last 12 months. In Chicago, 15 percent of workers said
they had been trapped, roughly on par with workers in the other cities
covered in the survey. Of that Chicago group, 57 percent reported being
stuck longer than five minutes.

The survey polled nearly 6,500 people in 16 U.S. cities about characteristics of their office buildings to gauge how “green” and efficient these structures are.

That’s not as bad as New York City, where 67 percent of trapped workers said they had been there for longer than five minutes, or Dallas, where the number was 64 percent.

The survey also showed that 15 percent of Chicago office workers reported that their building uses solar energy or another kind of renewable resource, roughly on par with the other cities. In addition, 77 percent of Chicago workers said they conserve water or electricity as part of their “regular routine” at work. The highest percentage of self-reporting do-gooders was in San Francisco, where 84 percent said they conserve resources at the office.

According to IBM, 405 Chicago workers participated in the online survey between March 30 and April 12.