[It's 4:00am. I enter the lobby of my apartment building after climbing down 8 flights of stairs. The fire alarm is sounding for the third time tonight.]
Front desk: Hi, what can I do for you?
Me: What do you mean "what can I do for you"? The freaking fire alarm is going off.
Front desk: Oh. There's no fire.
Me: I'm so glad, but this is the third false alarm tonight. How many more times tonight are we going to do this? Can't you at least give some sort of all-clear signal you can give to let us know when it's a false alarm?
Front desk: No, we don't have an all-clear signal. But don't worry -- you can be confident that any additional fire alarms tonight are false fire alarms.
Me: Really? That's your policy? I'll feel so reassured when the alarm goes off again in half an hour -- I'll just roll over and go back to sleep, thinking "silly fire alarm, doesn't it know that there can't be a real fire once there have been three false alarms in the same night"?
Thing is, fire or no fire, the damage is done. I've lost the core of my sleeping hours for the night. With the adrenaline from these middle-of-the-night evacuations (not to mention my currently everlasting hatred of the management company) there's no way I'm going to be able to get back to sleep before I need to get up for work. Since I'm in the middle of a metaphorical fire drill at work, the best I can hope for is an hour-and-a-half of lying in my bed stressing about everything I need to get done in the next 24 hours -- which I will now be doing on no sleep.
Ugh.
Forget it. I'm already up. I'll just go to work now. It's going to be a long day.
Front desk: Hi, what can I do for you?
Me: What do you mean "what can I do for you"? The freaking fire alarm is going off.
Front desk: Oh. There's no fire.
Me: I'm so glad, but this is the third false alarm tonight. How many more times tonight are we going to do this? Can't you at least give some sort of all-clear signal you can give to let us know when it's a false alarm?
Front desk: No, we don't have an all-clear signal. But don't worry -- you can be confident that any additional fire alarms tonight are false fire alarms.
Me: Really? That's your policy? I'll feel so reassured when the alarm goes off again in half an hour -- I'll just roll over and go back to sleep, thinking "silly fire alarm, doesn't it know that there can't be a real fire once there have been three false alarms in the same night"?
* * *
Thing is, fire or no fire, the damage is done. I've lost the core of my sleeping hours for the night. With the adrenaline from these middle-of-the-night evacuations (not to mention my currently everlasting hatred of the management company) there's no way I'm going to be able to get back to sleep before I need to get up for work. Since I'm in the middle of a metaphorical fire drill at work, the best I can hope for is an hour-and-a-half of lying in my bed stressing about everything I need to get done in the next 24 hours -- which I will now be doing on no sleep.
Ugh.
Forget it. I'm already up. I'll just go to work now. It's going to be a long day.
2 comments:
That is unacceptable! I would be lodging a formal complaint. GMG rules! Lady
Sounds like that 15 minute cat nap under the desk is going to be a must...
Post a Comment