Okay, I know this blog post title sounds rather mean and aggressive, but hear me out. I closed at OfficeMax again tonight, and about 15 minutes before the store closed I was back in ImPress, after helping some lady figure out how to download and install the Microsoft Office 2007 Conversion Tool, when the fire alarm suddenly started blaring. Now, I thought I'd heard some pretty loud alarms at my old store, but this was on a whole different level! The noise just assaulted your ears, and made your head vibrate and pulse, and experience all kinds of painful sensations. It obliterated thought and reason, and made it near impossible to focus on anything except getting away from the insane cacophony of sound! And to be honest, I suppose that's the idea, but they could have toned it down a bit. It really didn't need to be THAT loud!
So, in stunned confusion, I glanced towards the front of the store where my co-workers had gathered (noticing they're lack of panic so I figured that more than likely the building WASN'T actually on fire), and started to make my way through the aisles, and up to join them. With a confused, questioning look, and a shouted but still barely audible query, I asked what was going on, and why hadn't anyone stopped the horrendously awful noise? I was informed that some man had just left the store with a French-speaking lady who had apparently been "into the margaritas" (according to the man), and who had taken the fire extinguisher off the wall (and done SOMETHING with it, although I'm not sure what), before intentionally pulling the fire alarm and running out the door. Needless to say, at this point, with our ears all but bleeding, most of us wanted to kill this woman!
Sean, the MOD, was trying desperately to talk with the alarm company and the fire department (who had already dispatched a crew to our store), letting them no that no, there wasn't an actual fire, but could they please tell him how to make the bloody alarm stop ringing; while the rest of us wandered aimlessly around the store with our hands covering our ears, trying to block out the intense sound.
As often as we could, we stepped out to the front of the store, outside on the sidewalk, to try and shield ourselves from the aural barrage of the fire alarm, but it was store closing time, and we still had a lot of work to do, so we had to keep going back inside and exposing ourselves to the ear splitting sound!
Shortly thereafter, a fire truck pulled up in front of the store, lights a-flashing, and several guys poured out of the truck with oxygen tanks on, ready to fight a fire. We met them outside the store, and informed them that there wasn't a fire, and that the alarm had been triggered by a drunk customer, but that we had been unable, so far, to shut it off. So three fireman walked back into the store with us, and we showed them where the alarm had been pulled, and they set about trying to get the "Pull Here" bar on the alarm to go back up, and stay up. They were able to do this, finally, but the alarm was STILL going off, and the code that Sean had, that SHOULD have silenced the alarm, was apparently not working. By this time, about 15-20 minutes had gone by, and our ears were all but bleeding from the constant noise. One of the fireman said something to Sean, who responded that his code wasn't working, and then they asked to see the alarm panel. I don't know what all they did, but after about 5 minutes or so in the manager's office, there was suddenly blessed silence...sort of.
The alarm had been going off for so long, that once it was turned off, there was a new sound like torrential rain pounding down onto the roof of the building that took up residence in our ears, and it was accompanied by a horrible ringing that's usually the result of something like several hours of a live rock concert! We just heard this awful roaring sound in our ears for the next few minutes, and when it stopped we were left with splitting headaches and the continuing ringing. We also couldn't hear very well, and there was a lot of "Huh? What'd you say?!?" going back and forth as we tried to talk to one another, and continue with our closing procedures for the night.
So needless to say, we were all in a fairly bad mood by this point, and wanted to hunt down the French-speaking lady and "have a word or two" with her! With luck, none of us will experience any long-term (or God forbid, permanent) hearing loss from this little incident, but if any of us see that lady back at our store again, we're going to give her a piece of our mind (and potentially a sound thrashing about the head and shoulders!) *sigh*
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