Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Earthquake redux

So where was I when the earthquake hit?
I was in my office, doing some nonsense at my desk.
I noticed that the desk started shaking, first a little, then a lot. My water cup on my desk shook, too, not quite hard enough to spill the water out.

My first thought was: "Who the hell is doing that? And HOW?" Then it dawned on me after a few seconds what was going on. I got up, went into the hallway, and yelled "EVERYBODY OUTSIDE! NOW!" I then put the same message over the building PA system. Other people in the building, almost all of whom worked for me, quickly filed out. I went down the stairs into the parking lot and turned around to see almost everyone else standing outside on our building's patio, right under the big patio roof which is supported by some cheesy huge columns. It didn't take Albert Einstein to figure out which part of that structurally unsound building was the most unsound. It was that patio roof hands down.

"Hey you retards," I yelled. "Get out from under that roof before it falls on the bunch of you!" They quickly came down to where I stood like a bunch of chagrined sheep and I did a quick head count. All there.

Then the calls for service started coming in and I began sending them out to handle things. As I did so, my boss's boss, who also happened to be in the building (and on the patio) came up to me. "Retards?"

Yeah, I'm sure that I'll pay for that later. But I've managed to duck her all day yesterday and today though so life's still good.

3 comments:

  1. Kinda like when we had a bomb threat and they evacuated us to directly across the street. Still standing in front of a glass building. I looked at it for a moment and said "I'm going to lunch."

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  2. heh, my mom works in Boston (in a glass building), they had a bomb threat practice or something similer (I forget what, but it was more than just a fire drill), everyone was told to go across the street and down a couple buildings....still surrounded by a bunch more big mostly glass buildings. My mom (with a masters degree in engineering) had a great big long talk with the emergency planners after that.....knowing my mother the only reason it DIDN'T contain profainity was because she considers herself a Christian woman who doesn't speak that way.....

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  3. Anonymous10:16 AM

    Heh, I remember when my school had bomb threats (yes, plural), we evacuated to the football field... right across the street from the school. I used to sarcastically ask the science teachers if that short, thin brick wall at the edge of the field would protect us if the school blew up. They all just laughed and rolled their eyes. Everyone knew that evacuation plan was bulls***, except for the school administrators.

    -Raptor

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