Monday, July 10, 2006

Excitement for the day

I usually get in to work earlier than most of my co-workers which lets me get stuff done when the office is nice an quiet and people aren't asking me for stuff that they should be able to do themselves. This morning I was sitting at my desk enjoying the song "I Feel Love" by Blue Man Group and one of the ladies that works in our building came in shouting, "There's a fire in the break room!" On a related note, I've noticed that everywhere that I've worked, people seem to think that the IT department is the group to go to unless otherwise directed. Anyway, since the IT department was the fire department today, I went to investigate.

Our company is very generous in the facilities that it provides for employees in the break room. We're not Google or anything, but we have multiple refrigerators, soda fountains, iced tea, microwaves, toasters, etc. The downside is that no one takes it upon themselves to clean things like the crumb tray in the bottom of the toaster. It turns out that if you never empty them, they will catch fire.

When I saw the flames, I thought to myself, "It's a good thing that we had our fire extinguishers serviced last week." Then I turned around and saw the empty hook where the extinguisher hung until the guy took it last week to have it replaced but hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. By then, a small crowd was gathering to stare at the flames and one of the people began filling a pitcher with water. Was no one paying attention in third grade when the fire people came to the school and told you not to throw water on an electrical fire?

On an anti-climactic note, I grabbed the toaster, yanked the plug, and then carried it outside. There was an extinguisher in the lobby that I used to put it out, and as soon as the crisis was over and it needed to be cleaned up, the crowd dispersed instantly.

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