An Up & Down Career -- Space Needle Operator Gets A Rise Out Of Her Job, Which Has Been On Track For 20 Years

Jenny Dibley told Raisa Gorbachev the Seattle Space Needle is 605 feet tall.

She told the King of Tonga, Donny Osmond and Andre the Giant the same thing when she zipped them up the outside of one of Seattle's tallest structures in a glass-fronted elevator.

But what Dibley didn't mention is that she has an overwhelming fear of heights.

She can't bear to look through the crack where the observation-level floor meets the elevator floor.

Only the most sadistic vocational test would have matched Dibley with her chosen career: She recently celebrated 20 years as a Space Needle elevator operator, the longest service since the thing was built for the Seattle World's Fair in 1962.

Elevating 6,864,000 guests has conditioned her - a little.

"I guess I gradually overcame my fear of heights on the elevator, but I still cannot get on a ladder or even stand on a chair," Dibley said. "I can't change a light bulb."

Linger? Not her

If that isn't bad enough, Dibley also suffers motion sickness, which may account for why she has the fastest turnaround average - three minutes from bottom to top and back again - of any operator. She doesn't like to linger at the top.

Remember the 1993 Inauguration Day storm?

The Space Needle is designed to sway 1 inch for every 10 miles per hour of wind. It has a circular torque motion, she said, "a kind of twist." Talk about dedication! Dibley stayed on duty through winds that reached 94 mph.

The odd thing is that Dibley encourages everyone else to come running to the Space Needle when the weather gets wild.

Wind?

"It's really exciting."

Snow?

"When it snows it's so exciting. The elevator goes faster than the snow falls and so it looks as though it's snowing up."

Sun?

"People sometimes say, oh, Jenny, calm down, but you come up here in the morning . . . A week ago, we had this sunrise, and we had this breakfast group going up. It just got pinker and pinker and it was just brilliant and you could see all the Olympics and the Cascades and Mount Rainier and Mount Baker.

"It's always changing, but it's always beautiful. I just can't help but be enthusiastic."

Which leads us to what Jenny Dibley likes about her job. Views are one thing, but what could make someone be a "43-second tour guide" over and over and over again for 20 years. It's not as if she ever has the challenge of carving a new path.

It comes down to this: Dibley likes people. From the time she was 2 and tried to make contact through the car window with a man who was Dumpster-diving, her mother has told her, "Jenny, be careful, you don't know a stranger."

She still doesn't. She feels sure she was put here to make people feel better about themselves, even if it's just to draw a smile. It's the role of elevator operators to be the "heart and soul" of the Needle, which suits her fine.

"This is a job where you have permission to enjoy yourself," she said. In her world of cornball comedy, a groan's as good as a grin.

When her teenagers leave home, Dibley plans to go back to finish college and take up a career in helping people recover from life's struggles. Divorce, substance abuse. She doesn't care what.

But for now her big thrill is spilling a little of her enthusiasm into the lives of thousands of people a day, squeezing them in up to 25 at a time.

"Hi! I'm Jenny. I'll be your tour guide today. That's freshwater Lake Union to your right, Queen Anne hill to the north and saltwater Elliott Bay to your left. The Space Needle is still 605 feet tall. That's the equivalent of 76 camels stacked on top of one another. Wouldn't that be a sight?"

"Hi! I'm Jenny. I'm your 43-second tour guide. I read an article in the newspaper recently that said elevators are the safest way to travel. So you should visit the Space Needle for good health and happiness. Sell your house, move in closer and buy an annual pass for $49. You can take three friends with you. You could save something like $12,000 if you came every day."

"Hi! I'm Jenny. Nobody has any hats on! You should visit our wonderful gift shop. Our hats are guaranteed to bring you more friends, they look so nice. One man wore his fishing and the fish jumped into the boat. They say the more shopping you do the longer you'll live. They say that because women outlive men and they're great shoppers."

"Hi! . . . "

You already know, of course, that in Seattle we have two seasons. "Is it going to rain?" and "It's raining." Dibley likes to tell visitors that somewhere in between we get 100 days of sunshine. If there are folks from Minnesota in the elevator, they usually come right back at her with their state's two seasons: "Winter" and "Road repair."

Did you say you're from Texas? Look out, here comes a very BIG Texas joke, in which the main character assumes he has fallen not into a swimming pool but a Texas-size commode.

Here for the dental convention? Dibley will either thumb through her joke book collection at home or drill her fellow operators for dental jokes.

Dibley has traveled about 20 miles by elevator since her first day of work on Oct. 29, 1976, after following a tip from a cousin that her bubbly personality would be perfect. That's roughly 457,600 journeys.

Don't ask how many times she's been asked about the "ups and downs" of her job.

But she will say, "The positive side is our jobs are very uplifting in spite of all the letdowns and I get a raise every three minutes."

There's a lot of upward mobility, too, but you can't really trust an elevator operator. "They always let you down."

Dibley suffered her most embarrassing moment pretty early in her career.

She was seven months pregnant and wearing a long black skirt. The extra material kept flying out the door when she opened it, and one time it caught on something as the door shut.

The elevator headed down from the observation deck to the restaurant level, and the next thing Dibley knew her big round belly was exposed to all the guests. She was hanging by her armpits, dress fully raised.

No one said a word, "but their mouths were open," Dibley recalls.

"They were so distracted by . . . by my . . ."

The elevator did as it was supposed to do: It stopped. Finally two men stepped forward and pulled the dress free, and as the elevator slowly descended they helped Dibley put her little tent back on.

"I was able to smooth my dress down just in time as we got down to the ground," said Dibley. "There was a long line of people waiting. I'm so trained that right on cue I said, `Thank you all for visiting the Space Needle. Have a great day.' They all just kind of stumbled off."

Dibley won't say how embarrassed she was, but a year later a couple of teenagers riding the elevator asked her if it were true that a pregnant operator had once caught her dress.

Dibley looked them in the eye and lied. "I haven't heard that story," she said.

"I guess it was too soon for me."

Dibley credits her father, a retired pilot, and her "heavenly father" with giving her the spiritual foundation that gives her job meaning. The Space Needle is a great place to work, she said, very positive and upbeat, but her faith has helped shape her attitude.

"Unless it were divine intervention, I don't know how I could do it for 20 years."

"Hi! I'm Jenny. I hope you enjoyed your visit to the Space Needle today. The base is 150 feet wide and it goes down three stories. It's so heavy that if something pushed the Space Needle over, it would pop back up.

"Do you know why they call it terra firma? Because the more firma, the less terra."