Thursday, May 13, 2004

Pins and Needles

Today is Yellow Hard Hat Day. Which means it is the annual Fire Drill a-rama. Yesterday those of us unfortunate enough to be in possession of a yellow hard hat stamped with "Emergency Coordinator" had to go to the pre-drill meeting. I can't tell you what we talked about because it's super-secret hard hat stuff, and if I told you, I'd have to kill you.

HA! Not only will I tell you, but I'd be happy to let somebody (anybody) take over my hard hat duty. It comes with a lovely assortment of emergency coordinator gifts. In addition to the fetching yellow hard hat (fresh from it's appearance in a recent fourth-grade presentation on the history of Michigan), you also receive a waterproof pouch, complete with emergency slips that must be filled out, absolutely nothing with which to write, a mini flashlight that doesn't work and a whistle heretofore untested.

Feel the power.

So, the meeting. The meeting is the same every year: three people ask the same questions over and over again, and the rest of us look for the quickest escape route out of the conference room. After we've gone over THE PLAN eighty or ninety times, we are finally free to go and preach THE PLAN to our fellow coworkers.

Now today we sit and wait on pins and needles. Waiting for the ALARM to go off so we can SPRING into ACTION! It's a very CAPS LOCK kind of event, if you can't tell.

It makes the daily grind rather exciting -- Should I go to the bathroom? Will the blast of the alarm blow me clear off the porcelain? Will I ever be able to eat lunch?

Once outside, I have to bum a pencil off of somebody to fill out my report and turn it into Heap Big Chief Hard Hat with the Fetching Green Stripe. He's our leader. All hail Chief Green Stripe!

And then we sit around and wait for the all clear....
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Which now, at 11:42 am, it is. Safe for another year!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Guess who our "Floor Captain" is? Incompetent But Likeable. He doesn't even have a hard hat, his only officially sanctioned equipment is a flashlight. I know I feel safer knowing he's in charge.

-Kat

GreenTuna said...

I could send him my whistle!