If looks could kill....

[murakozi]

Writing that last post reminded me of something that happened last week. The fire alarm in the building went off. It's an interesting alarm. Four whoops that sound sorta like the sounds that the old arcade Battlezone game made when something appeared on the radar, followed by a male voice saying there's a fire emergency in the building and to get out via the nearest exit. Everyone dutifully secures stuff and we all shuffle over to the stairway. Now my company is on the 5th floor of the building, which is the top floor, so we run into lots of folks in the stairwell going down. Just as I get to the 4th floor, some folks come out into the stairs, and one is a young Asian woman dressed in a bright rainbow of colors, and some spikey high heeled plastic shoes. Why on earth she didn't take the stupid things off is beyond me. Instead she slowly shuffled down the stairs, all wobbly on her heels, while everyone got backed up behind her. The previous couple weeks, they'd been testing the alarm system, so there was a good chance that it was just a final test to make the fire marshall happy. I have to say, though, that I was pretty tempted to go all George Castanza and shove her out of the way. Oh, and when we got to the ground floor and the exit to the parking lot, she acutally paused too dig her cell phone from her purse to make a call, while still in front of the door.

The whole thing reminded me of something a coworker once said at my last job. It was in reference to a woman in our department who constantly complained how cold it was in the building, and kept sneaking a little space heater in under her desk, yet, in the middle of winter, she'd wear disturbingly high skirts and tank tops to work. Of her, the ex-Brit coworker said "...some people will just fashion themselves to death..."