OCCUPIED COUNTRY

Fire in the Hole

So I enter the secure area at work today and discover the overwhelming smell of electrical over-heating. It was so bad it triggered the fire/smoke alarm. There on the panel on the wall all the warning lights were flashing in rythm with the warning whine.

"In the event of the alarm sounding immediately phone the Fire and Security Department on ext XXXX".

"Hello is that Fire and Security?"

"Errr....yeah."

"I'm in such-and-such room. There is a strong smell of something possibly burning and the alarm's going off."

"Well it's not going off according to our equipment."

"What?"

"According to our equipment there's no alarm going off."

"Can you hear that?" *Holds phone up to the alarm*

"Yeah...yeah I can."

"Well that's the frigging alarm and, as you can hear, it's going off regardless of what your 'equipment' says."

"Have you reported it?"

"Err I'm reporting it now aren't I?"

"No mate, you need to phone ext XXXX and log it with WeCouldn'tGiveAShit Ltd. They look after the fire side of things now as the function's been outsourced."

"Outsourced?"

"Yeah to WeCouldn'tGiveAShit Ltd. On ext XXXX. You need to log it with them and then someone will come out."

"So what do we do if the place bursts into flame in the meantime?"

"Give us a bell and we'll get the fire brigade in."

So, an hour later two 'pillars of the community' turn up. One of them is wearing a Burberry baseball cap as well as other evidence of Chav-ness and his mate has got a shaved head and an arse the size of Jordan's ego.

"I can't fuckin' smell anyfin' - can you Mick?"

"Fuckin' 'ell Gaz. It stinks like fuck."

"Does it? Mind you I've always 'ad a fuckin' shit sense o' smell I 'ave. Me Mam always said I smelled fuckin' awful - ha ha ha."

This continues for another 15 minutes or so before they finally discover one of the air conditioning units is overheating and proceed to contact somebody else who deals with air conditioning units. Another hour passes before another two turn up.

"Fuckin' 'ell that's 'ot as fuck that is. Didn't they turn it off?"

"Well...obviously not......look are you gonna sort it or what?"

"Yeah no problem mate. They should've isolated it though. Fuckin' thing could go up at any minute."

"Errrr....right I'll err leave you to it then." *Exits at speed whilst attempting to appear outwardly calm*

Half an hour later the air conditioning man comes to see me to tell me that everything's now OK. I thank him and get on with a few things before going back into the secure area. The smells gone, everything looks fine - apart from the fact that alarm's still wailing away. So I phone Fire and Security to explain that the emergency is now over and the alarm needs resetting or whatever it is they do.

"Alarm?"

"Yeah, it needs restting as the problem's been sorted by two lads from WeCouldn'tGiveAShit Ltd."

"Well it's not going off according to our equipment."

"What?"

"According to our equipment there's no alarm going off.........."

I felt in dire need of a Lyle-like explosion of well-honed and well-directed abuse of the highest order. In the end I settled for a diplomatic "ok fine" and replaced the receiver. I figure that when (or should that be if?) they do their 'rounds' tonight, checking for terrorists and the like, they might - just might - hear the alarm a-howling and do whatever they need to do to stop it.

Mind you perhaps that's not their job either. No doubt WeCouldn'tGiveAShit Ltd have sub-contracted 'turning off alarms' to We'reStillReallyEagerAndSon Ltd because they've just started up and WeCouldn'tGiveAShit Ltd couldn't give a shit decided that it would benefit their client to offload this particular task.