Help I'm trapped in a stairwell and I can't get out

Every once and a while I start to feel really intelligent. My Japanese is improving, I finish a project without being told I suck, or I just make it through the day listening to Japanese for 8 hours without getting a headache.

But don't worry, I won't get a big head about it or anything, because as soon as I start to feel smart, Japan reminds me that I am not.

Today I was expected to stay late for a training within my division. However, it was really just three of my coworkers telling us about the training sessions they went to. So it was a big old waste of and hour and a half of my time.

It ended around 6:30. It was the latest I had ever been in city hall before and I was dying to get home.

There are two exits to city hall and I always take the main exit, not the employee exit. The mayor's office is on my floor so the elevator on the employee exit side does not stop on the floor unless you have a special key. I do not. So I take the main side elevators.

Today I left the office at 6:30. When I got to the elevators, I realized they were shut off for the night. That should have been my first clue.

So I took the stairs down to the first floor.

When I exited the stairs, it was dark in the main entry hall. That should have been my second clue.

But I walked toward the automatic glass doors. By this point I was a bit nervous and I figured they might not open. They didn't.

I tried the back door inside the main entrance, but it was locked.

I couldn't get to the employee exit because they had shut the gate that leads to it. So I went back to the stairs to try to get up to the second floor to get to the employee exit.

But the stairs were locked.

So I was trapped in the main hall of city hall.

I remembered a stairwell in the center of the room leading down to the basement, so I went there hoping to get to the parking garage or something. I wound up back in the same stairwell...luckily the door was unlocked.

BUT...the door to the 2nd floor was locked.

The door to the 3rd floor was locked...

And just when I thought I was going to have to call my boss and tell him I had trapped myself in a stairwell, I got to the 4th floor. Thank God for the hardworking people on the 4th floor. The door was wide open!

I made it across the 4th floor and down the elevators on the other side...but the door to get outside wouldn't open.

The security guard stood there and laughed at me as I pulled and pulled, until I realized I had to turn the lock.

It was almost 7 by the time I actually escaped city hall.