The Fire Alarm Does Not Mean You Have To Leave The Building
The fire alarm went off while I was at work the other day. It’s not the most unusual thing to happen, I have been working when fire alarm tests have happened before. I think the first time, I left the building, realized nobody else was leaving, and went back in. I asked what was going on, and it turned out it was just a test of the fire alarm system. I don’t really remember if there was anything more to that story, the main thing I remembered is that I learned the fire alarm does not mean you have to leave the building.
(a photo I took at work, while in a secluded back area)
This time, however, I had heard nothing about there being a test, I had no idea what was going on, but I was in the middle of checking out a long line of customers. They were startled (as I was), but nobody was rushing to the exit. I shouted out to a manager, asking, “Is this a test?”, he replied back that he didn’t know, but he wasn’t rushing for the exit. I quickly finished ringing up the customer I had been ringing and started on the next. A few moments later, a supervisor called out to me “We need to leave!”, so I told the customers that we actually needed to leave, and started evacuating the building. I accidentally left my phone behind. I think the lady I had just started ringing up a moment ago decided to grab a bottle of wine and just left with it.
I, my coworkers (most of whom took their time actually getting out), and the various customers who had decided to stick around were all hanging out outside, watching the Fire Truck eventually come, and the Fire Department people head over to the building next to ours. Not that long after, we learn that it was a false alarm triggered by that store somehow damaging their sprinkler system. So, we all file back into our store, workers and customers alike. The alarm was still blaring, but why stay outside when there’s no fire?
I want to emphasize that the fire alarm is painfully loud, like, I’m pretty sure it’s at ‘could damage your hearing’ decibel levels. This is probably done to encourage people to leave as quickly as possible, but what are you supposed to do when it is a test, or a false alarm? We don’t control when the fire alarm tests happen, so we’re kinda just forced to deal with it. Obviously, we can’t close the store to accommodate for those tests, because that would be a major upset to the profits of our betters. There cannot have been any legal justification for why I had to go back in, nobody directly told me that I had to return to work, I just did what everyone else was doing. It could probably be argued to be unsafe working conditions, but I’m a poor person in my mid-twenties, so I don’t think I could afford to speak to a lawyer for an hour, let alone hire one to represent me in court. I’m alright to take responsibility for my own actions here.
Some customers wanted to finish up their transactions. I assume they wanted to get what they were already going to buy and then get the hell out of there. Other people were just wandering around, casually browsing, acting like nothing was happening. I even saw a new customer walk in, be completely unphased by the blaring alarm, and they just casually went about their business. Thankfully, the alarm shut off pretty quickly afterwards, but goddamn did my ears hurt for a bit.
The fire alarm as a safety system failed that day. Sure, I suppose it’s better that something like that triggers a false alarm, than if it were to fail to alert people when an actual fire is going on, but must it be so loud that it damages your ears? Once people have verified that there isn’t actually a fire, the desire to Return to Normalcy triumphs over everything else, even though it’s still technically a dangerous situation, it’s not a life-threatening situation, so we resign ourselves to needing to put up with it. The false alarms and unpredictable tests render the fire alarm practically useless. Every time something like this happens, it reinforces that The Fire Alarm Does Not Mean You Have To Leave The Building. I’m afraid to imagine what would happen in an actual emergency.
In thinking about this, I’m realizing that creating a safety system designed to warn people when they are in danger is an impossibly tall order. Fire alarms are clearly designed to drive people out of the building, but probably 90 plus percent of the time they go off, it’s a fire drill or a false alarm. All that they're doing then is damaging peoples’ ears, and thus it gets relegated to the status of “annoying thing I have to learn to ignore”. It seems people will only treat it seriously if there is also actual evidence of a fire happening, such as there being smoke filling the room, or something, and then at that point, why even bother having a fire alarm? Time is the most valuable resource in the world and there’s few things people hate more than having their time wasted.
This situation also reminded me of the broader context of living in a dystopian society, and specifically how in the United States we're sliding further and further into fascism. For a lot of people, most of the time, it isn’t really that different from living in a normal society, until the time comes for it to specifically affect you. But unless or until that happens, who’s to say that democracy is in danger? Who’s to say that the government is full of white supremacists? After all, my life has remained perfectly normal, thank you very much. The government hasn’t come after me, so what could possibly be the big deal? Whatever is happening to you is probably your fault to begin with. By the way, why is gas so expensive all of a sudden? I need that in order to go to work every day!
The alarms are blaring and most people have learned to ignore it, because they believe they're not actually in danger of encountering a fire.