Not an alarmist

Well that was interesting.

So I was walking up the central hallway here at work and, as I passed one of the stairway/emergency exits, I could hear the siren of the building's fire alarm going off on a lower floor.

The way the alarm system works in the building is that when the alarm is triggered, either via a sensor or pull station or whatever, the alarm initially goes off on that floor and the one above and below.  After a delay, it'll go off on the next floor(s) until all 5 floors and the garage alarms are going off.  So if it was triggered on the 3rd floor, the alarm'd sound on 2, 3, and 4, then a little later on 1 and 5.

So, figuring we'd be hearing it soon, I warned a few folk (like the two guys who just got back from back injuries and can't get around all that well) and waited.  We waited...and waited.   Now technically, you're not supposed to actually evacuate until the alarm sounds.  The idea is to keep the stairwells from getting jammed up.  Anyway, after a bit, we called down to the guard desk and were told "oh, you won't hear it up there" and that folks were coming back in.

Uh, yeah.  So how're we supposed to know the place is potentially burning down?  Yeesh.

At least I didn't have to go stand outside in sub freezing temperatures.