text and subtext

[cellio]

Message from landlord: "In accordance with city ordinance blah blah, we will be conducting a mandatory evacuation drill on $date at 10AM."

Implied message from landlord: "Unless you particularly want to walk down 43 flights of stairs, that might be a good day to make other plans."

Unknown: whether the latter was intended -- fewer people in the building means fewer people who can mess up a compliance-check, after all. Though this would have been more plausible if they'd called it for 8AM rather than 10.

On a tangent, I wonder how people with mobility impairments get out of office buildings during alarms. There's no job-related reason I couldn't have a coworker in a wheelchair, after all, so somebody must have thought this through. (Please let somebody have thought that through...) Do they keep an elevator in service in that case (even though elevators are normally disabled during fire alarms), or is the floor warden responsible for rounding up people to carry the person downstairs, or what?

Comments

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

(drive by comment) In the buildings I have worked in, there have been fire and blast proof refuge spaces on each fire escape, where someone in a wheelchair could shelter until the professionals show up - these are the same refuge zones that we're all supposed to use if there's a bomb, when heading outside is potentially going into danger.

[cellio]

Welcome! Please feel free to drive by any time. (Tangent: "anti abolishment of fruitcake"? Nice. I know someone who makes excellent fruitcake.)

I hadn't heard of those kinds of refuge zones before (other than below ground). Good to know.