The Fire Alarm
I work in a school. Not a huge one, but large enough. This story happened a few years ago when I was still a smoker and hadn't yet learned about the wonderful uses that cigarette money can be put to like holidays, computers, more beer and wine and stuff like that. I digress; let us return to the story.

I was working in a small poky back office that only had a single window which should look out over a classroom, but was now covered in posters. The "back office" was a former server room and had been fitted with smoke detectors, an extractor fan, and, as a former kitchen, even had its own sink. It was and still is very useful to have as a coffee room. This particular day I was busy using Access to design a whole school reporting system for our end of year reports. This was quite a high profile job and if I messed this up I would be very humiliated indeed. Today I was concentrating on the output to parents, the design of the end of year report itself, and because the printer was in my classroom I was having to design the report in the back office and then go through my mate B**l's classroom to my own room to pick up the printed sheet.

As this was quite boring work I was aided by a cup of coffee to one side of my PC, and a cigarette to the other. I printed out the report, put the cigarette in the ashtray (a yellow Castlemaine XXXX one that I had nicked from a pub) and went through to look at the output. I was comparing layouts by holding the paper up to the window when all of a sudden, the fire alarm went off. I went back through to the back office to put my cig out and then leave when I saw a terrible thing.

Sitting alone in its ashtray, in a room with only a single extractor fan for ventilation, the cigarette was discharging its smoke straight up in the air in a direct line without deviation or hesitation, and the smoke was enveloping the smoke detector which now had a flashing red light on its side.

I went back into B**l’s room, looked at his smoke detector which did not have a flashing red light on its side and said “Oh shit, I think it’s me” I was ok to swear at this point because B**l’s kids had left his room and he was about to lock up. I went through, walked downstairs and felt a trembling in my legs I went to register my group.

Towards the tennis courts I walked. As I approached them I saw B*b, one of the senior managers.
“I think it’s me B*b” I said.
“I know it’s you Occulus.” he replied, leering unpleasantly with an evil grin on his face.

It is a weird, yet strangely wonderful feeling to look out and see over a thousand people milling about in confusion and know it’s your fault. Even now the memory still fills me with a misplaced sense of pride. I had set the alarm off 10 minutes before the end of the last lesson of the day. I had completely wrecked my colleagues’ hard work. Even worse, the students would now have to go back to the teaching room, pick up their bags and equipment and then struggle through a mass of people to return to their form rooms to be registered again. Some students would return to find their stuff stolen by their classmates, some would simply not bother returning at all, and some would miss their buses home. Irate parents would be waiting angrily by the gates to pick up their beloved darling child, who was right now screaming, red in the face, at some little hooligan who’d nicked their coat for a laugh. The school’s attendance statistics would be wrecked, and staff blood pressures would be raised through the ceiling.

It was all my fault.

The next day my head was interviewing new staff and despite my best efforts (I tried her office about 10 times, I really wanted to get it over with) was unable to give me my bollocking. Unfortunately I came down with a viral infection the next day and was then off work for a week. Unkind colleagues remarked that I was sitting at home shitting myself and that I was too scared to some in. It was a week of hell. I was crapping myself, literally. I was feeling shit because of the cold. I was not a happy bunny.

When I came back the head was out on a course. One of the deputies volunteered to give me my bollocking after my line manager, A*, pleaded with the senior team that it was unfair to leave me hanging in limbo like this. I was sent to Ch******e’s office.

“Oh thank god for that,” I thought, “It’s only Ch******e, she’s a big softy.

Ch******e did not raise her voice. She did not have to. As I stood there on the carpet, in her office (which stank of cig’s), she gave me the most severe telling off I have ever had in my life.

Now let’s get this right. I have had people cross at me for many things in my life. I have had people screaming at me, their spittle bouncing off my cheeks, their veins throbbing violently in their forehead. I have been reprimanded, I have been sacked, I have been treated like shit until I left of my own accord.

None of this was as bad as Ch******e’s comments about my responsibilities as an educator of young people, of how we should behave professionally around school, about the building of future careers, and how they may swiftly be curtailed. She informed me that reputations could be destroyed by one silly mistake, and that everyone would remember this.

All this happened 6 years ago. People haven’t forgotten. The story will never die. I’ve only entered QOTW this week because I’ve been e-mailed by B**l who said “you've got to do the "smoking/fire alarm incident"



Apologies for length? I am sorry, but it wasn’t my fault. It was B**l, he made me do it.
( Occulus Swallowed, instead of spat, on, Sat 22 Sep 2007, 9:08, Reply)