Evacuation Woes

[NateTheChops]

Our building got struck by lightening yesterday and triggered the alarm. I was in the breakroom at the time and not actually on the clock, but when the management made the announcement to evacuate the building, I put my name badge on anyway because I knew I'd have to help usher customers out of the store.

The fire department declared it safe a few minutes later, but I'd like to make a few points to customers in the future.

1: Do you hear that loud buzzing sound and see the flashing lights? That's not a Blue Light Special it's an emergency. When we ask you to evacuate, please do so in an orderly fashion.

2: Leave your carts at the check out and please leave the building. If there's anything left of the building afterwards you can always go back in to pay for your purchases.

3: When you see people standing outside the entrance, including several employees and mall security staff, please do not proceed to enter the building as there's a good reason they're standing outside.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Yeah, we ran into the same kind of nonsense at the wholesale club when we had to evacuate it due to a mulch fire outside, the smoke of which had been coming into the building from under the wall.

Folks just did not want to leave without their stuff, refused to evac until their purchases were rung up and paid for, and whined about having to be sent out of the store to the parking lot while the fire department investigated and extinguished the fire.

[PepperElf]

It's sad that you actually have to ARGUE with people against trying to be inside a building that's in the middle of an emergency.


Like trying to hold back lemmings from stampeding to a cliff ... sometimes you just wonder if it's not better to step aside to watch them fly...

[AmbrosiaWriter]

"But I'm a speehsal snowfleke and therefore you MUST enter the building and SERVE ME! You're just being lazy and want to get paid for standing around while people with REAL JOBS and REAL LIVES have to wait for your lazy butts to actually DO YOUR JOB. This is what happens when you give all the jerbs to the illegals!"

[downforit2008]

My store had to evacuate from a fire emergency just six weeks ago as well! It happened right when I was clocking in for the day. To the best of my knowledge, none of the customers complained about it and we were back in the store within 45 minutes. But it chills me to know that if the entire store bursts into flames, there will still be customers standing around inside the burning building and complaining, "Why can't I ever find someone who will help me get the item that I want?" I heard about a tornado flattening a WM store in Missouri last year and I think four or five customers died. I'm betting they were the pushy ones who refused to leave their purchases behind right until the roof was collapsing all around them.

[Desk clerk knows all]

I've had several times when the fire alarm has gone off in the hotel in the middle of the night and instead of getting their asses out of the building guest start calling the front and asking if they need to leave their room-duh. Thankfully it's never been a fire (mostly sprinkler problems) but our hotel is all interior hallways and it's probably in your best interest to get out and worry about why later.

[SkullBash]

Wow. There's an opportunity for a gene pool cleansing if I ever heard of one. Okay, maybe that's harsh...

What's crazy, though, is not being evacuated when there is something legitimate, such as - I don't know - a bomb threat called to a building across the street. I work across the street from a courthouse and only once or twice has a threat been called, and they of course evacuated that building and closed the streets. Our building? I had no idea what was going on until I stepped outside for lunch. I laugh because luckily the peace was left undisturbed, so I just imagined it was someone who wanted out of jury duty that day.

Fortunately, I know for a fact our people would be out of my building faster than you can say "boom goes the dynamite".

[depechemodefan]

Years ago we had a cafe in the library. The fire alarm went off so I did my duty of telling people to leave. There's a lot of people, so by the time I got to the cafe, it's been 5 min. since the alarm went off. And the fucking owner was still serving coffee! And a person who worked in City Hall was pumping cream or whatever in her coffee! And she was surprised when I told her she had to go! Of course I reported the cafe owner to the person in charge of fire drills.

[Trixie]

My store lost power in a rainstorm once and people still wanted to buy stuff. We had no registers, no phones and no lights. How about NO WAY?? Then when power did come back up people didn't even realize it was out and had to wait for the registers to come back up.

[BrenDAnn]

I;ve never had to evacuate the C-Store, but I have noticed a disturbing pattern of more people coming in when bad weather is happening. Oh, yes, because a fucking TORNADO WARNING is the perfect time to pump gas. Of course!

[Marmalady]

What's crazy, though, is not being evacuated when there is something legitimate

When I first worked for Huge Insurance Company, the big 'PC on every desk' boom hadn't happened yet, and departments sent their documents in batches to be keyed onto the mainframe by operators in one BIG department (all the ops were women, btw)

So one day there was a fire alarm. Everyone got out of the buildings (when I say Huge Insurance company, I mean we basically took up an entire street in this city).
Afterwards it transpired that when the alarm went off, and the abovementioned ops started getting up off their chairs, the supervisor told them 'Where are you going? It's just a drill, there's no need for you to go!'

Apparently she was told she could wait to see if it was a drill or not, if she wanted to, but they were getting themselves out of there.