Friday, January 14, 2011

Fine, you do not want to go to gym. I will punish you with this blaring alarm.

I had the best of intentions this morning. I was going to the gym after work. Then work actually happened. After that, the bus ride home. By the end of that adventure I was in no mood to do anything but eat, flop around on the couch and watch re-runs of Mad Men to see Don Draper (Who I'm very afraid that I may be developing actual feelings for. It's scary, I know.).

Apparently God was angry with my choice.

The exact minute that I had on my pajamas, had my dinner laid out before me, lounging under my blanket, with the credits to Mad Men rolling, Voila! Yes, that aggravating noise would be the building fire alarm.

I spent some time in the industrial setting working in an actual factory where there are literally 12 different alarms for everything ranging from a CO2 dump (To extinguish a fire on a machine.) to an alarm for tornadoes and heavy winds. You haven't heard annoying until the wailing cacophony of the same note falling flat and rising sharp in rapid succession for minutes on end. But I will say this about our fire alarms; our fire alarm has the added bonus of a very pleasant woman coming on to tell us that 'A fire has been detected on an adjacent floor. Please be ready to evacuate if needed.' This is in addition to the aggravating siren like wailing of the alarm.

Of course the cat goes ape-shit and dives under my roomate's bed. For the first several minutes I continued to eat my dinner and listen to this nice woman repeatedly tell me that at some poorly defined point in the future I may need to evacuate. Then I decided that maybe I should ready myself and the cat. I put my real clothes back on (Look if I am caught outside of the apartment building while it burns to the ground I'm reasonably sure that Sex on Skates will be there and I can't be caught in my oh-so-alluring holey plaid pajama pants. He may want to seek solace in my arms and I need to be looking my best for that.) and go to fetch the cat. I never did find her cat carrier so I guess if I had ever managed to get her out from under the bed I would've just dumped her in a pillow case. To be safe I texted my roomate that the building was on fire and told him his cat loved him. I neglected to mention my plan of tossing her in the shower and shutting the doors with the water on to protect her from the encroaching flames.

As it turns out, some asshat set their microwave to the 'Manhattan Project' setting to cook their popcorn. The building never was on fire and avoided burning down. For 15 minutes I listened to the nice woman tell me over the intercom system to get ready to evacuate. Do you know what that accomplishes? Absolutely nothing. What do I do once I'm prepared to evacuate? Do I actually evacuate or do I just stand around waiting on her instructions? And how prepared do I need to be? Is this a drop everything and run emergency or do I have time to grab some things? Will there be a follow up message of an equally polite woman directing me to evacuate? Or will it be some maniac screaming 'Run for your lives!' and 'Please take the stairs in case of emergency'?

Wouldn't it just be simpler to direct people to evacuate? It seems to me they're sending a somewhat ambiguous message. 'You may have to evacuate but we're not really sure where the fire is yet or if there is a fire or hell, it may just be a blip in the system, but keep on the lookout just in case. And remember, rent is past-due after the 5th!' In public school they send you outside no matter what, shouldn't the same principle be applied here?

I ask you, in the case of fires is there really room for ambiguity?

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