Oh. My. Gosh.I just had the most humiliating experience ever.
So, it turns out that that burnt toast episode earlier in the week was a mere run through of the catastrophic turn of events this morning.
So, I'm at work, and I pop my toast in the toaster, and go back to my desk to check my emails. I eventually remember and hurry back to the kitchenette to find it full of smoke. I yelp, and dispose of the evidence. I try my trick of shooing the smoke with a tea towel. No avail.
Moments later the alarms. The sound is pierced in to my memory. Then not just my floor, but the corresponding nine other floors of the building. The sound of the apocalypse.
I hurry down stairs, where hundreds of people are evacuating. Lines of people head diligently towards North Sydney Oval in single file. There is no building manager in sight. I find some familiar faces and own up. They smile, and say it's okay, but I can see little daggers and pitchforks when I look in to their eyes.
The crowds increase, but still no building manager, and no sign of the fire brigade.
Twenty minutes later, yes twenty minutes of non stop alarms and "Emergency! Emergency! Evacuate Now! Evacuate Now!" over the loud speaker, the fire engines finally roll up. Apparently communication was down, and they hadn't been alerted. Just this one morning.
I swallow hard, and walk over shiftily to the fire brigade guys, massive burly blokes with their massive suits on. The crowds part as I walk over. I hear whispers. Plots to kill. Gather your pitchforks. Meet at the old mill.
The head fire brigade guy takes off his dark glasses, as I approach. What seems to be the problem, sonny? I explain. Sorry sir, it was me and my toast. I apologise profusely. I take them up to my floor and they do their business. They comment on what a good view I have from my desk. I agree. we have some idle chit chat about television production. They are on their way, their work here is done.
I go back down to the ground
I get into a lift finally, and skulk back to my desk. And rue the day I was born.
12 comments:
I daresay that everyone's a bit excited at the turn of event in an otherwise dull mid-week morning (and a chance to leave their desks).
Yes, I'm always grateful for a good evacuation (good = no actual fire danger!) - consider yourself as having performed a public service!
Ouch...
You can at least claim you were just giving people a break on a Friday morning.
I agree - a public service. Your building was overdue for a fire drill, wasn't it?
We had a similar thing when I was working for CBA. Someone burnt their toast, the alarms went off, the lights went out, but we all just stayed at our desks until the firemen came. It would've been impressive to see 36 floors' worth of people spilling out into Martin Place!
Not to alarm you, Ben, but I never saw that toast-burning lady again.
So, let me get this straight - the toaster didn't automatically shut off or did you set it too high?
Yeah, I thought I was being helpful too, but no one else seemed to see it that way. Their all 'little-picture' people..
I didn't set the toaster. But also another contributing factor was that it was like a bread roll rather than actual bread- so it kind goes from white to charcoal in seconds flat.
Stuart, and now I will become another statistic, just because I was trying to help my fellowman.
We had similar problems when I was living at a college at uni, except that we'd have to pile out into the carpark in whatever we were wearing at whatever time it was - eg. any time of night that someone burnt the toast!
Well....better to have it be an embarrassing situation like that than something where people's lives are actually in danger. People will forget about it in time, but from this point on every time somebody burns the toast, the finger will more than likely be pointed at you.
So funny! If it makes you feel any better, we had a lady called Rosa who was always trying to jam turkish bread, which she sliced through the middle, into the toaster, which caught alight every time, and she caused an evacuation on THREE occasions. They actually took our toaster away! Now another friend of mine keeps her own toaster on her desk in disgust.
(It probably won't make you feel any better to let you know that Rosa got one of the first redundancies last year, which could be because she worked on some obscure dispensable product, or could be because she repeatedly evacuated the building.) It's a good way to make yourself famous, after a fashion. Rosa lives on in all our hearts - every time the alarms go off now someone has to ask "is Rosa making toast?" even though she no works there.
But, yes, these days I get to put on my First Aid officer cap and make my way authoritatively out of the building with my little kit and stand around looking important (and being first aid officer is otherwise disappointingly boring), so I kind of like a little evacuation.
Good choice of picture by the way.
you poor bugger... but that's so funny! can you please come to Lismore and do the same on my first day back?
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