Today I’m at work. Average Sunday on the phones - pretty quiet. There’s a few minutes between calls and I’m using it to catch up on my reading. Nothing unusual.
I get a call and I can tell right away they feel like chatting. I wrap up the issue on the account and am listening to the lady tell me about her daughter’s wedding. I figure I’ll give her a minute or two before I end the call.
Then the fire alarm goes off
You cannot mistake our alarms for anything else. It’s about 100+ decibels of ERRRRRRRRRPbeatERRRRRRRRRRRP* on a loop with the ERRRRRRRRRP ranging three octaves. You can hear it clearly outside from at least fifty feet. Any lucky caller on the phone can hear it.
Immediately my mood goes from “let the lady chat” to “grab the purse and get the HELL OUT”. I say in my calmest voice “I apologize, but the security alarms are going off. Your account is reset for usage and have a nice day.”
Her response? “Really? You can’t stay on the phone?”
:smack:
At this point, I have my friend literally pulling on my sleeve. I decide to give up on trying to nicely get rid of her and say “look, I have to evacuate the building. Goodbye” and disconnected the call. I could hear her still talking when I did so.
I may be an excellent employee, but I draw the line at staying in a building engulfed in flames.
Turned out there WAS a fire. A small one with a little smoke damage in my building, on the floor below mine. Good thing those departments are closed on the weekends. We were outside for about forty five minutes until the all clear was sounded. We counted fire trucks (five, counting the hook and ladder), ambulances (two) and started the pool for “Who Will Moon the News Chopper?”
Funny story, BTW and I’m glad no one got hurt, but the question is: what if you HADN’T finished closing her account? Are you a good enough employee to finish the transaction before evacuating?
I can close an account with one keystroke if need be. If I thought there was a fraud issue, damn skippy I would have. We’re supposed to go through a three window process but fire = hardy doing the shortcut. originally posted by fionn
My friend Ron would have done it for free but wanted fifty bucks to drop trou and do the penguin walk. Alas, no news choppers.
I hope I never get so lonely that I have to call help lines for my telephone company or whoever in order to have someone to talk to. I mean, I’m polite to these people, but they’re not my friends, and I can’t think of a goddamned reason any of them would give a rat’s ass about what’s going on in my life unless I’m making a fanciful excuse as to why I want another two months free of internet service.
Glad to hear the fire was nothing serious, though. Just out of curiosity, does your office have sprinklers, or that “No more oxygen for you” gas?
El Elvis Rojo - You mean halon? That stuff is EVIL! Not found very much nowadays, though, since the Helsinki Accord or whatever that agreement was called. Tearin’ holes in the ozone layer, donchaknow.
hardygrrl - How about this one: I was trying to help a customer re-assemble a Ruger MK1 pistol over the telephone. Me: “The pistol is disassembled, right? Okay, check the chamber and check that there is no magazine inserted. Make sure the pistol is completely safe and then turn the pistol upside down and pull the trigger.” Customer: “Okay.” pause… “Am I holding it in the correct position now?” Me: “Well, sir, I can’t really see it from where I’m sitting.” Customer: “Oh. Okay, how’s this then?”
Yeah, I got that once in a tornado drill. “I’m sorry that your washer isn’t working, but we just got a tornado warning and need to seek shelter. Please call right back and a rep at another call center will help you.” Lucky me, my guy understood.
Speaking of clueless customers, I had one last week. We sent her a form for her to authorize billing her telephone bill to her credit card, and she called in to ask how long it would take, after she filled out the form, before we would send her her new credit card.
I could probably talk him into it just by saying “Hey Ron, it would be so funny if…” but they insist I use my powers of persuasion for good. Bastards.
El Elvis Rojo - they say we have sprinklers but knowing the cost cutting measures we’ve gone through, they may have substituted them with the generic Evian bottles with the squirt top, labeled “remove cap, pull spout upwards, point at fire and squeeze”.
They installed a halon system at work about fifteen years ago. That was about the same time there was a report on the Army’s Bradley armored personel carrier’s halon system. I don’t remember if there were human deaths, but in experiments with live pigs, the animals suffocated and frothed blood.
When our system was installed, we were told it was safe to be in the room in the event of a discharge. They explained that halon works by, IIRC, encircling the oxygen molecules, preventing them from burning. My thought was that don’t our lungs burn oxygen, in a way?
There’s little of it left at work now. The system has been dumped a few times from faulty or dirty sensors. Due to being banned in I think, the Montreal Protocol, it’s expensive to replace. So there are only two small rooms left with a working system, while our large, main computer room is left protected by sprinklers.
asterion, Halon is the best for electronic equipment. Water ruins it and other chemicals leave a residue.
Helsinki, Montreal - they’re about the same right? Halon is used extensively in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. I was told that halon interrupts the chemical action of fire. I remember seeing a demonstration film of halon that consisted of a man standing in a plexiglas chamber holding a burning piece of paper; halon was released in the chamber and the fire went out - with no adverse effects to the guy in there.
I have been in modules when the halon was “dumped” and although I didn’t stick around for a long period of time (because of all the hassle associated with a halon release), I didn’t suffer any ill effects. This has happened more times than I care to admit, BTW.
I believe there is some sort of “banking” system connected with halon use - “you can release some halon if I curtail my use,” or some such. There is also a market sytem that consists of buying up halon from facilities that are changing to a different extinguishing agent. These shenanigans occur because there is a rather steep fine for each halon release. The amount of the fine is determined by how many pounds of halon is involved. In some facilities in Prudhoe Bay, the amount is very substantial.
According to our company policy, we are required to log out of our systems before evacuating in the event of a volcanic eruption, but we are not required to log out of our systems in the event of a nuclear attack. I don’t know why they don’t mention that at the orientation.
Wow. The worst I could do to a customer would be to talk him through a process that would erase all the numbers in his phone book. You must have either inhuman self control or few repeat callers.
We still use Halon in the system room where all the electrical equipment is. We had a firedrill yesturday, and when I went back in to check something after the alarm had finally turned off, all the engineers were standing outside the closed doors just chatting away. I think it’s funny that we’ve got the system set up, yet all the doors have to be closed manually. So, luckily, here if you get stuck in there, you can still manage to open the door and get out. But yeah, if you’re caught inside with that stuff, you will suffocate and die, so you might want to pass that info along to your coworkers there, International Playboy.
2trew - I was tempted to ask that guy if he still had the box for the Ruger MK1 pistol… (you know the rest of the story, prolly) El Elvis Rojo - the doors have to be closed in order for the halon to do it’s magic. Usually, the doors have magnetic release devices if the doors are normally kept open. Don’t know about the “suffocate and die” part, because I have always been able to evacuate the area - if a person was injured in some way and couldn’t escape and remained in the area a long time… dunno.
