Fire at work today!

[sarahj]

About an hour before my shift finished this afternoon, an odd alarm started going off. I was very confused. It sounded like a tornado alarm from when I lived over in the USA, and we had drills and stuff. Anyway, I asked one of the managers, and he told me it was the fire alarm!

So the managers are trying to turn it off, and I keep serving customers who are yelling their orders over the siren. The kitchen guys are trying to track down where the fire is, trying to prove there isn't one, so there's no one cooking. And customers are getting angry.

The dining area starts filling up with smoke, the kitchen too, and people are still sitting around and eating. Out come the managers, unable to turn the alarm off. "It's legit! There's a fire! Everyone out!" Slowly, people leave. Some people have to be convinced to go. "But I'm not finished eating!" etc. You know how it goes.

Fire crews arrive - seven fire trucks! Sweet! And a handful of police are around. Everyone's told to back off except employees; we stand near the front entrance while people ask us when we're gonna re-open. Um, not anytime soon. The place is flooded and the power's turned off! Yeah, we're just gonna magic you up some disgustingly unhealthy food. Give us a minute to locate a wand.

They kept us around for another two hours. One was spent outside while the fire, found to be on fourth level from recently-installed electrical wiring, was extinguished. Then we went back in and cleared off the tables and put all the chairs up. We were allowed to go up to the crew rooms on the third level and get our stuff. The managers told us to call their mobiles tonight to find out if we're open tomorrow, and they let us go.

I called Mum, Dad and bf on the way home. Cos we might be on the news, plus Dad can see my work from his office window, so they wouldn't worry.

The fire was awesome cos no one was hurt, and I love love LOVE fire trucks and police cars! Yay! But I hope we're open tomorrow cos I need the cash.

[Cia]

When the MGM Grand burned in Las Vegas the firefighters found crispy critters next to the slot machines.

[BookstoreEscapee]

[threadjack] sorry...

It amazes me that customers just sit there and complain when they are told the building is on FIRE.

4 related stories: 2 involving actual fire, 1 almost fire and 1 fire alarm.

My ex is a manager at another BN. A couple years ago he opened the day after Thanksgiving (so having been closed the day before) and there was some problem with the lights. I forget how it all went down, but the electrician was called and discovered that one of the electrical panels in the electrical room was all burnt out behind the panel. Luckily it burnt itself out before starting a full on fire and they were able to open the store, but they couldn't turn the lights off all weekend until they could get everything fixed on Monday. (Which I suppose is better than not being able to turn them on.)

His store also had a fire in one of the newsstand fixtures. There are lights underneath the racks, and one of them shorted out and set the magazines and the wooden fixture on fire. It was put out with a fire extinguisher, and then the fire trucks came and they checked to make sure there was no further danger. The had to replace a whole section of the fixture.

In my first store: there are 2 offices off the breakroom, and I was on break when I heard a pop and sizzle coming from one of the offices. There was a computer under the desk (I don't know why or what it was for) and something apparently shorted out. I saw a flash and smoke and paged the manager real quick!

Same store: They come to test the fire alarm every so often (I think once a month). One day they were testing and set it off, then couldn't get the thing to shut off. Do customers leave? Of course not. One woman complained that it would hurt her infant's ears (then leave!). Half the staff escaped outside, leaving me to ring up the customers who wanted to buy stuff before leaving, all the while with the alarm speaker right above my head at my register. Thanks for helping me out, guys! My ears already ring all the time as it is! Eventually I got to go outside too and we hung out freezing until they finally got the thing turned off.

(Then there's the cigarette in the mulch behind my other store that refused to stop smoldering and smoking, and people were calling us from the stores behind us to tell us about it. You could smell it into the kids department...kinda smelled good, actually...)

[/threadjack] :sorry so long:

[Worker-Intellectual]

I think that if customers are too stupid or their priorities are so messed up that they want to stay in a burning building, they should burn to death while chowing down on their Big Mac. Let the morons burn.

[sarahj]

Lol. Anyway I just got a call and we're open again, so as soon as I can get the smoke-smell out of my uniform (and my hair!), I'm going in. I bet we get a few complaints about being closed last night and this morning!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Geez, excitement all around at work today!

Today at my store we had some guy drop over in the pharmacy department. He was out cold and every so often emitting a snoring sound I thought was an attempt at breathing. I suspect the poor guy either had a heart attack or a stroke.

This happened right as I was leaving for the day. The rescue squad pulled up as I was leaving and on the way home I ran into the fire truck coming to the store.

I didn't see any suckiness from the other people in line, but I did see somebody who appeared to be a bystander kneeling by the guy and administering first aid. That reaffirms my faith in humanity a little bit.

[BookstoreEscapee]

That reaffirms my faith in humanity a little bit.

I think at least when it comes to actual medical emergencies people tend to find their inner, well, human. Last year I was at the movies with my friend, and a woman behind us apparently had a mini-stroke. She couldn't move on one side for several seconds. Her friend went out to find someone to call 911, and they stopped the movie for about 20 minutes. While they were waiting for the EMT some guy in the theater who was a doctor came over to talk to her. (She walked out under her own steam with the EMTs so she seemed OK at that point.) But no one complained, everyone sat quietly, some used the chance to go to the bathroom, get popcorn, whatever. Then they started the movie back up and we watched the rest. And we all got a free ticket for the future.

[wagegoth]

Fire trucks are cool (though painful too the ears), but it's all the beautiful firemen that I like to see.

We had a vent fan burn out one night at a place I worked in San Francisco. Since it was on the fourth floor (eight flights of stairs), all the older firemen stayed outside and the young, studly guys ran up the stairs to put out the tiny, smoky fire.

So, after having to exit the building down all those flights of stairs, we had to stand around outside with all the old guys. Just wasn't as good.

[Department stores *sigh*]

ugh i think i mentioned this one before but when my store caught fire and we told the customers to evacuate a woman who was a former security guard told us 'The kids where running to the exit!' she told us to lock them in so they dont escape...........

THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE GET OUT!

of course she wrote us personally to complain how we handled the situation. Apparently no one dying and the store being in one piece wasnt good enough

[GayleShy]

< threadjack>

We had a bomb threat in our store and it had to be evacuated, obviously. I guess some people bitched out the CSMs who were trying to make them leave and they had to get managemet over and tell them that they really did have to leave and no one would put away their stuff. The threat turned out to be nothing, but still, if I even thought a store was going to blow up, I'd be out of there in a heart beat. I'm not sure if they are allowed to tell why the store's being evacuated, though. Still, if someone was telling me to leave the store, I'd leave.

< End thread jack>

[Spiffy McMoron]

Fire trucks are cool (though painful too the ears), but it's all the beautiful firemen that I like to see.

Heh. This reminds me of a story my little sister told me.

She still lives at home with Mom and Dad, and she works two jobs to earn more money. At the time, her day job was at a grocery store, and her week-end job was waiting tables at the most popular bar in town.

The aforementioned town has a firefighter training school, when young bucks learn the ins and outs of fighting fires. They also like to come to the bar, most of them thinking that they are hot shit (no pun intended) and hit on anything with a uterus, my sister included. That makes them fairly unpopular with the waitstaff, plus they tend to be lousy tippers.

One particularly busy Friday night, the place was full of firemen trainees getting plastered. Somebody, somewhere, decided to be funny and pull the fire alarm. The employees are trying to find out what the hell is going on (or finding out if they really is a fire) and trying to get everyone out of the bar. Not one single firefighter-in-training helped. In fact, most of them sat where they were, trying to finish their drinks.

Another story from the same sister:

Her new day job is a teller in a bank. Her and another co-worker were sent up to Edmonton to take part in some training course or something, and they were staying at a hotel. On the morning of the second day, some yahoo pulls a fire alarm. My sister and her co-worker naturally get the hell out of Dodge, and end up on the street in pajamas and bathrobes. They were one of the few who did. Those that did eventually come out came out later, with full make-up, or suits and ties on, dressed to the nines. Nice to see some self-preservation out of the business class...

[ArenaBoy]

I live in an old neighborhood, I live 2 blocks away from the downtown part of town, right across the street from the police (you can see the station right out the window and I live on the same street as the Fire Department. This is important for the story I'm about to tell.

Like I stated, I live in an old neighborhood meaning that quite a lot of places are suspectible to fire including the downtown area. This includes my house, which was built in the 1920s and some of these houses go back to the early 1800s. One day, around this time of year a popular Mexican restaurant caught fire. This was a huge problem as the buildings were connected to each other and there were concerns about it. The fire at the restaurant wiped out half a block of the downtown area. We were fortunate that the fire didn't spread and that it wasn't windy as there were predictions for wind that night. Anyway 3 years later the restaurant opened up for businees and the only thing I don't miss is the people stopping in the middle of the road to let folks out.