Natural Selection at my brother's hotel

[smileyeagle1021]

This is why I hated fire alarms when I worked at the hotel. People would always call and ask if it was a real alarm... I don't know, stop calling me for 5 seconds and I can check. It got to the point where we had the policy that we were to immediately silence the alarm, check the validity of the emergency, and then restart the alarm if it was real. At that time, if it was safe to do so we were to take the lock override (which would override even the deadbolt) and go room to room to make sure people were evacuating (of course, the if it was safe was at the discretion of the employees, they wouldn't require us to risk our own safety unless we chose to do so... and as much as the insurance company hated it, they knew that we had the employees who would go room to room even if it was against policy to make sure the guests were safe).
Though, this is reminding me of a story at the call center that I need to post.

[Sheldonrs]

Please. I can't even get a girl to sleep with me, let alone convince her to sleep with someone else.

Lube up and Close your eyes. I'll be right over.

[greek_jester]

Ah, memories. Best evacuation story? Nearly 3 o'clock in the morning, Manchester, October, everyone (except staff) standing around in the jammies, & a guy with a dog comes up & asks if anyone wants to buy the Big Issue...

On the other hand, weekly scheduled fire alarm tests were fun. We used to time calls to certain awkward customers/suppliers so that, at just about the point they'd get really nasty, the alarm would be tested. Cue politely excusing ourselves & slamming the phones down. We must have had a reputation as a company with the dodgiest alarm system in the county!

[trailerparkmedic]

When I worked at the computer company, I was pretty impressed that employees evacuated during fire alarms. We could get our biggest building (5000ish employees) cleared in under 10 minutes. I think people evacuated just so they could take a break from working.

[Wenchie]

I worked for one company for many years where I would be the only person after 5pm on my side of the building one evening per month. There would be people on the other side of the building, but they'd forget about us (we took turns staying late to make calls, so we each only had to stay one night/month late usually) - this wasn't normally a big thing except that occasionally they'd set the alarms and lock us in (they look I set off the motion detector!) except for one night.

Now, picture this. I'm the only one on my side of the building. Building is pretty much soundproof where I am. Weather looks pretty bad out the windows, so I call a friend to ask if her husband can pick me up from work so I didn't have to take the bus. Over the phone, I hear the tornado sirens. They live 2 miles from my work. WTF?! I could NOT hear the sirens on my side, and the rest of the company had evacuated to the shelter downstairs and had forgotten about me.

Corporate was very much not happy with the supervisors/managers who forgot to check the office, especially since they knew that someone was required to be on my side until close.

[Whiskey]

they live 2 miles from my work. WTF?! I could NOT hear the sirens on my side, and the rest of the company had evacuated to the shelter downstairs and had forgotten about me.

Corporate was very much not happy with the supervisors/managers who forgot to check the office, especially since they knew that someone was required to be on my side until close.

O_O HOLY SUPERVISORY FAIL

[Wenchie]

O_O HOLY SUPERVISORY FAIL

Yeah... it was awesome the next morning. My awesome Team Lead Jamie came up to me and said, "So, I heard there was a tornado in the area yesterday. Did they make an announcement on the Intercom, or did someone come down and let you know they were going down the the shelter?"

I answered, "Neither. They forgot about me. I heard the sirens while making an outgoing call and by the time I got to the front office door everyone was already downstairs."

Ohhhh.... he turned all shades of Kill-kill-kill (he was my friend as well as my lead) and immediately went to HR to let them know what happened.

[AccountingDrone]

Please. I can't even get a girl to sleep with me, let alone convince her to sleep with someone else.

Girls sleeping with others isnt the problem, the issue is getting her to do it while giving you the money =)

[PepperElf]

He tried complaining about me to the fire department. They told him he was a stupid bastard, too.

what could the fire department do against you anyway? fire you when you don't work for them?


the fire alarm went of a couple off times in my last barracks room in hawaii. I don't remember if the first time was real or a prank, but the second time it was some small fire. ... so with nothing to do in the middle of the night, one of the guys got in his truck, turned the headlights on and started blasting music. instant mini-party (mini, because there wasn't anything for a party really... i think the mini mart across the road was already closed.


of course two things sucked about it - i mean beyond having to leave the building in the middle of the night...

first, the alarms were night and loud outside. but inside the rooms they sounded like a car alarm. so... it wasn't hard to sleep through it or think "o it's just some stupid car" and ignore it. so the fire dept had to go room to room to make sure everyone was out.

second... no elevators. fine on the way down but... sometimes they didn't come back on right away. and i lived on the 17th floor. *grumble*

[roothorick]

Our fire system is a bitchy, cranky piece of garbage. The indoor workshop where we drag assemblies out of the machines to to do intensive, uninterruptible work on, like soldering, also happens to house the main control panel for the entire facility's fire system. And it NEVER stops complaining. Apparently it can't see a bell on one of the zones, but when we test it, it goes off just fine. Even the guys that put the system in are stumped. I hope it's nothing important. Thankfully, the building is a flat warehouse-style where the fire system probably isn't really necessary since we have about three times the exits we really need (we only put the system in because city fire code requires it in every commercial building above a certain ridiculously small size).

My hotel had a conference center/ball rooms. During one music performance, the band used smoke machines. There's different types, I guess some of the smoke/fog machines use water vapor, some use chemicals. Well, they were using a chemical one and it set-off the hotel alarms! They got in deeeeepppp trouble afterwards because the use of smoke machines WAS NOT in their agreement, and actually has to be approved by the events manager for just that reason!

Even the water types can set off fire systems, and more importantly and more dangerously, the HVAC system's fire safety cutoff. (Depending on the building's design, HVAC air circulation may be critical to maintaining safe oxygen levels.) I'm guessing the conference center and ballrooms were equipped with the appropriate fixtures for water-types but the chemical types are pretty hard to differentiate from actual smoke.

When we were putting in our laser tag arena, we had a BIIIIIIIG pissing match with the city, because they DEMANDED that we have certain smoke detector fixtures in our HVAC system that are simply not compatible with fog machines. They didn't back down until we threatened lawsuits (correction -- it was a discrimination suit because a different facility in the same jurisdiction used the SAME EXACT type of machine) and even then we had to go with a suboptimal setup that probably won't detect a fire if it actually happens. (And that's a really scary thought... have you seen the materials they make these arenas out of? Quite flammable, I assure you.)

[LadyAndreca]

I've told part of this story here before, but when I was in college the first time around, they redid the fire suppression system in my dorms during winter break one year. And somewhere in the system, they crossed wires, causing a short. The alarms were going off 2-3 times a day, randomly. Most students were short on sleep and I admit to having slept through at least one of the alarms simply because I was exhausted and too used to the sound. The fire department was extremely unhappy about having to show up so often, and even LESS happy about having to kick students out of the dorm rooms because people were ignoring the alarms.

And then there's the time some genius decided to completely empty a fire extinguisher INTO the HVAC system, triggering the smoke detectors. Thankfully, that system was only for the lounge and it didn't get into the rest of the building, but it freaked out a lot of people who thought there was smoke pouring out of the south stairs...