An Alarming Lack Of Alarm, Part 5
This story reminded me of something that happened at our school about a decade ago. I’m a teacher at the school, and one of my colleagues was a bit old-fashioned. You know the sort of thing, discipline in class, write with pen and paper rather than computers, etc. Now, her methods worked, and her students achieved good results, so that wasn’t really a problem.
One thing she insisted on, though, was that students knock on the door to the teacher’s office whenever they wanted to enter. Not so much to ask, right? Just teaching the kids normal courtesy, right? Yes, indeed. Except for one thing: one of the emergency exit paths went through the teacher’s office. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
One day, the fire alarm went off. No warning, it just started howling. I’m the designated fire safety guy on our staff, and I have drilled the students (and staff) to exit calmly whenever this happens, using THE NEAREST EXIT. This is important, otherwise we end up having 350 people all trying to leave by the main exit, which will increase the time it takes for everybody to exit the building, up to fifteen minutes instead of less than two.
Naturally, one group of students headed to the exit that went through the teachers’ office. I could see them heading in the door, and… then the queue stopped. Rushing over to see if there was a problem, I realized that they had been stopped by my above-mentioned colleague. All the while, the fire alarm was still howling away.
Colleague: “You can’t go through here.”
Students: “But the…”
Colleague: “No, no. Can’t go through here. This is the…”
Me: *Interrupting.* “Keep going, everyone! Out the back door, down the stairs, to the meeting spot!”
Colleague: “This is the…”
Me: “I said everyone. You too, let’s go.”
I didn’t give her a chance to argue. I just shooed the students through, pointing at the sign that marked the emergency exit while shooting my colleague a “don’t test me on this” look. We were all out of the building in less than two minutes. It turned out to be an unscheduled drill set up by the building’s owners, which is why we hadn’t been informed beforehand.
During our weekly staff meeting, I gave everybody a quick summary of how the drill had gone. I made a point to remind everyone, not mentioning anyone in particular, to always use the nearest exit, including the one going through the teachers’ office. My colleague didn’t say a word; she just looked sheepish.
Related:
An Alarming Lack Of Alarm, Part 4
An Alarming Lack Of Alarm, Part 3
An Alarming Lack Of Alarm, Part 2
An Alarming Lack Of Alarm