NOT ANOTHER ONE

I arrived at work this morning at 8AM. By 9:30, the fire alarm went off, so everyone had to evacuate the building. We just went through this not too long ago. Once you get to your designated place and sign in, you are free to wander about until the "all clear" is communicated. We went to the building across the street, because it was still quite cold outside. By around 1100, we arrived back at the work station. So, there were about 3500 employees (maybe more, but it is a Friday, and less people are in the building... supposedly there are ~5000 employees all told....); assume an average $20.00 per hour wage; for one and one half hours of down time. How much did that cost us in non-productive time and money? Because there was an actual fire that needed to be extinguished... could it have been prevented? Usually in this neighborhood, people don't proactively fix things. They wait until it breaks. And even if you do something proactively, your neighbor doesn't, so you rarely benefit from being on top of things. When we moved to the "other" building, someone asked why that building never has fire alarms and ours always does. Someone quipped that the people in THAT building are more important. I guess that is all relative.

Employees exiting the building, the fire trucks just arrived...
Another $100,000+ wasted