Yep its biohazard safety level 4… Never did figure out why they call it the P-4.
Gotta love going to work in a place where you have no clue if the alarm lights on the panel where you enter your working enviroment indicate if you will suffer from death, severe injuries, radical pressure/temperature chances or have a normal day.
Hrrm I should take this to a new post so I can vent… not like I have work to do or anythign.
I assume you are addressing me, for although you don’t make a direct address, you have quoted me in your nitpicking. I’m aware that these people didn’t arrive on a red hook and ladder. Whether ‘fire-marshal’ or ‘fireman’ maybe you can explain to me how the difference results in it being OK to curse at the former because they had a fire drill. Go ahead I’ll wait.
Don’t presume to tell me what dangers are, or are not, present at my place of employment. We have surprise fire drills; we leave in an orderly fashion; we do not panic - all under the knowledge that a fire in this facility would be so dangerous that the fire department is under instructions not to enter, even to seek employers or fight the fire, but rather concentrate on clearing neighboring buildings. Quit your mewling.
Your best emergency plan is to find out who is a claustrophobe in your area, and follow them. A claustrophobe always knows where all the exits are of any building; we have no time for panic, either. Our only mission is GETTING OUT OF THE BUILDING. You can come along if you like; just don’t slow us down.
CRorex, I wasn’t feeling too frightened about biological warfare until I read your posts. (insert somewhat wavering big grin).
The OP was hilarious. A clear 8.
LOL that is an interesting variant to “calmly head towards the nearest exit, do not panic, do not run”, including trampling people screaming histericaly.
C’mon cut the guy some slack.
Uh…Rilchiam? Waverly? What’s your fucking problem?
We had not yet heard whether or not the Anthrax scare was real.
We had never had a fire drill before, so we weren’t sure whether what we were hearing was a fire drill or not. We did not have any idea that this was a fire drill until we got outside. These office buildings have been here less than a year, this was the first time anyone heard this noise, which sounds nothing like a fire alarm buzzer.
The fact that our office is really close to what we consider to be another target for terrorists - the NASA research center - made all of us even more nervous that we would be targeted.
The “fire marshall” people are our facilities guys - they are no way, shape or form actual firemen. They’re guys that stand around wearing hats that say “Marshall” and tell us where to go stand.
Should they have been cursed at? Probably not, but given the circumstances, I’d say we were all a little on edge. I’m glad to hear from your expert opinion that Kindergartners would behave better under identical circumstances.
Oh, and since my last post the facilities people did apologize for their unfortunate timing in all of this, FWIW.
And Rilchiam, I have no idea what the hell that “Tacos and watch Doctor Who” comment was about, unless you are making the comment that all MS employees are fat nerds who watch Sci Fi all the time. I was under the impression that sweeping generalizations about other people’s appearances or lifestyles wasn’t what these boards are about. You don’t know anything about me, so back the fuck off, asshole.
My sympathies, Dooku. My brother-in-law works at that building and I have had numerous conversations with my sister in the past few days about the Anthrax scare and how deeply, deeply freaked he has been. She tells me she has never seen him this shook up, and he has had some bad things in his life before.
Sounds like piss-poor timing on MS’s part. they should have had at least one announced drill before they sprung it on an already jittery group of people.
And FTR, my brother-in-law is no fat sci-fi watching geek. He’s an unusually intelligent, good-looking, and extremely hard-working man who probably has no idea who Dr. Who is.
Waverly, I was going to respond to your post at length but Dooku put the circumstances pretty clearly in his last post. You’ve made it clear you wouldn’t have behaved the same way in that situation, fine. If you can’t have any sympathy or at least cut him and his coworkers some slack, I really can’t see how to continue this argument without descending to the “You’re a jerk,” “No, you are stage.”
–John
Dooku…
The worse a problem is, the more important it is to maintain order and calm.
Cursing at people who are acting in an official capacity: uncool.
If there had been a slight but real problem, like a fire in the building, running around and screaming could have made it worse, like herding people towards the fire instead of out of the building.
I’ll retract the “tacos and Doctor Who” remark, but the rest stands.
Well… at least this way people will remember what the fire alarm sounds like, right?
I remember last year in my dormitory we had quite a few drills (mostly the result of a dick of a hall director) which resulted in the inevitable – every started ignoring them.
The fact that later in the year we had a series of actual fire alarms just made the problem worse. (Well, they weren’t actual fires so much as the result of a questionable administrative decision, namely the installation of smoke alarms(as opposed to heat alarms) in the student smoking lounges – but leaving the dorm at 2 AM, in the winter, in Minnesota only to find that out of an entire dormitory approximately 20 people have decided to leave the building at all has always met my criteria for a surrealistic experience.)
Wait a sec. You’ve never had a fire drill before? How long have you been working in that building? That’s kinda scary, at least to me.
Here in NYC, most commercial buildings have fire drills at least once a year. When I worked downtown, we took it pretty seriously (admittedly, this was post-1993); the fire department sent representatives to watch over us.
Sounds like you guys were pretty overdue. Better to have the chaos under these circumstances than in a “real thing.”
I wouldn’t worry about BSL-4. A lot of BSL-4 pathogens kill you too fast to spread it. I’d be more afraid of people in BSL-3. All you have to wear are double gloves, some plastic gown and a face mask. Which means there is a lot of your body not covered by protection which you can contaminate, I could spill virus on my chair, then sit on it and contamint my ass and I wouldn’t notice (ok if I spilled enough that my ass got wet I would). There is no decontamination protocol and I could carry anything I want all over the place.
“Added fuel to the flames of panic, locked the doors leading to reason and hid the change of underware.” Mission Accomplished!
You ever read “The Stand” by Stephen King, CRorex?
Heh. MY company has a written policy that you are supposed to remain at your desk when the fire alarm goes off, until an announcement is made saying whether it is real or not. Not that anyone cares, or that I would get in the least bit of trouble (I can walk out of the building at any time just to take a walk and no one would question me), but it is ludicrous to imagine people waiting patiently at their desks, coughing, choking, trying to put out the fire with their leftover coffee from breakfast…
Yue Han: Oh no, please don’t respond ‘at length’. I’m not sure my fragile psyche could handle it.
Dooku: I don’t have a problem with you (unless you are responsible for the Directed Com module that keeps trying to shanghai my internet connection). I merely thought the behavior you described during the fire drill was silly [“total hysteria”], even under the circumstances. I hope you don’t take my saying so personally.