Day 250 - Fire!

I am a fire warden at my place of work. Today, I was giving an induction presentation about the Freedom of Information Act to some new starters when the alarms started ringing.

And they kept ringing. And it's not the day when they test our alarms. And anyway, we would know, because the world's most irritating automated voiceover informs us it's a test at exhausting length.

'...another good reason why we need to have good records management,' I called as they gathered their things, 'is so we can reconstruct our data in the even of a fire!' We made our way to the nearest stairwell and I - rather redundantly - asked them to make their way outside. I then mosied down to my own floor and grabbed my fetching dayglo 'Fire Warden' vest and proceeded to check my floor. Most people were gone but I found a woman wandering around.

'You need to leave the building now,' I said.

'Yes, but I need my coat,' she replied.

For the love of all that is decent and good! Fire evacuation procedures are not rocket science, are they? They amount to "The building is on fire, why not leave it as soon as possible using the stairs?" Unless I am greatly mistaken, they do not include the caveat, 'unless it's a bit nippy outside, in which case, feel to fuck about looking for your coat...'
I conveyed this in slightly less robust language.

'But I'm pregnant,' she explained.

The French have a term 'Esprit D'escalier', literally 'the wit of the staircase', which refers to the brilliant comebacks you only think off after you've walked away from the situation in which they should have been employed.What I should have said was, 'So is my wife, and I'm not prepared to burn to death before I see my child just so you can grab your bastard coat...'

...but of course I didn't.

I did point out that this wasn't a drill and I needed to get her out of the building, but short of manhandling her, I couldn't really see how I could do a hell of a lot. In the end, we eventually got to her seat and picked up her coat and then I very grumpily escorted her from the building and immediately reported the stupid bint to the fire marshal.

We still don't know what set the alarms off, but it was probably mundane - someone putting something in the microwave for too long or something, and I know I wasn't likely to have been in any real danger, but we didn't know. It certainly wasn't worth the five minutes it took to locate the bloody coat, particularly when I'm sure there would have been several thousand colleagues outside who would happily have lent her one.

People are such twats sometimes.