Don't worry, it is just a drill

On Friday I had to leave work early due to preannounced fire drill taking place. I was among the odd few who had actually come to the office on Friday rather than working from home due to the same drill. They had announcements on the elevators posted already on Monday asking politely for forgiveness for any inconvenience caused.

Is it just me or isn't a bit weird to tell people before hand that there is going to be a fire drill. I mean of course it is good to practice exiting the building in orderly fashion and convening on designated assembly point so that in a real situation people know how not to wave hands and scream. However, apparently preannouncing makes everybody leave and avoid the hassle altogether. It was clearly agreed to be done on Friday afternoon to cause least amount of disruption to business. It seems to me fulfilling of the mandated process step just for the sake of fulfilling.

At least back in Finland you never know whether it is a drill or a real thing, you should be behaving exactly the same. Having drills ever so often has caused that I often finish what I am doing on my laptop before gathering my things. Occasionally I found myself wondering would it really be worth it finishing "this one last email" just before inhaling toxic fumes if it was a real case. For good or worse I am not panicking.

Not related to 'Pore or Finland, but my colleague told me a funny anecdote to fire drills while working: A fire alarm went off and this colleague of mine started to leave the work premises. This time it was clearly not a drill, but heavy smoke was already coming from the corridor. There was another coworker still on the phone clearly with a client. My friend started urging his colleague to leave the building pointing at the smoke. The following phone conversation apparently really took place:

- "I am so sorry ma'am, but it seems that there seems to be a bit of a fire in the office I am working, so I might need to you to ask to call our number again in a while"
- "What? Is there smoke?"
- "Oh yes, there has been smoke in the office for quite some time now, ma'am."
- "There is a fire going on and you are still talking to me?"
- "But I would like to make sure that you would not mind calling us back again."
- "Get out now! Seriously."
- "How would you rate your call today..." 

"Se taitaa olla vain pora." (Sorry, old Finnish inside Star Wars humour)
(picture from http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/36inoo/)

PS. In continuation to the comments to this old post, I went to see the new Start Trek movie yesterday night (again at IMAX) and was blown away. Plenty of horizontal lens flares and pretty nice scifi imagery.