Songfacts®:

• Courtney Barnett wrote this tune about a friend of hers who likes to go to the top of a particular building to enjoy the view. She explained to Nothing But Hope and Passion: "One day he got into the elevator with this lady, and she freaked out because she thought he was going up to the roof to kill himself. He told me the story, and it seemed to be such a crazy kind of story to me, just a crazy situation. She must have assumed that something was wrong with him, because he was young and had scruffy hair or something – I don't know."
• This is the opening track of Courtney Barnett's debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. Asked why she chose this one as her opening track, the singer replied: "It's the only song that isn't about me and my feelings, but about someone else's, and the lyrics come in straight away, right in your face. It seemed like a good way to set the tone for the album."
• Here are some elevator fun facts courtesy of The Encyclopedia of Trivia:
  
  The earliest known reference to an elevator is in the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who reported that Archimedes built his first elevator probably in 236 BC.
  
  Henry Waterman invented the modern elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.
  
  The first passenger elevator was installed at E V Haughwout’s New York department store on Broadway on March 23, 1857. It was rather slow travelling at 40 feet per minute.
  
  The Equitable Life Building completed in 1870 in New York City was the first office building to have passenger elevators.
  
  There is an elevator company named Schindler's, meaning that there are Schindler’s lifts!
  
  Elevators make 18 billion passenger trips each year in the United States, according to ConsumerWatch.com.
• The Sunny Leunig-directed clip features a maroon uniformed Barnett in the titular role. She encounters a collection of fellow musicians and other celebrities as she travels up and down in her elevator. They include legendary punk trio Sleater-Kinney struggling to read an Australian road, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and son Spencer, director Sunny Leunig and Australian actresses Tain Stangret and Magda Szubanski.
• "Elevator Operator" took Courtney Barnett five years to finish. It all started with a bizarre encounter her friend experienced. Taking the elevator to the top floor of a Melbourne building, a woman convinced he was on the brink of suicide confronted him. "She tried to talk him out of it," Barnett recounted to Vulture.
  
  Barnett found humor in the absurdity. "It's a few seconds of being in an elevator together. How had she totally concocted this story?"
  
  Inspired by this strange interaction, she decided to craft her own narrative around the experience. "Elevator Operator" was born, but the song wouldn't come easy.
  
  For five years, the concept simmered. Barnett, wrestling with the third-person perspective and the story itself, couldn't quite make it click. Finally, while putting together Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, the missing pieces fell into place. The wait was worth it. "Elevator Operator" became the perfect introduction to Barnett's signature sound - a quirky tale spun with wit and a touch of melancholy.