Delusions of catastrophe

Have you ever found yourself staring out the window looking at all of the cars below and you see one in particular that doesn't look quite right. Then before you can even begin to formulate hypotheses about the nature of this anomalous vehicle; it explodes! You find yourself flying to your feet barely believing the scene laid before you, flames coursing into the air and shrapnel riddled bodies spread across the lot. In that instant of complete exasperation moments before you shout for your colleagues to come running your neighbor lightly touches your shoulder and asks, "are you okay?" You begin to motion towards the window so they can see the carnage which has besieged your heretofore unremarkable workplace when something out of the corner of your eye catches your attention; the car, no longer in flames ambulatory personnel where once, moments before, laid the dead and wounded. Perplexed you compose yourself and say, "oh nothing, just a charlie horse," hoping this vain attempt to conceal your surprise will assuage the curiosity of your fellow office drone.

It seems that daydreaming about explosions and dead colleagues is not enough for some people. A few days ago the building in which we work was the target of a bomb threat. Not something terribly exciting considering the number of fire drills we are subjected to and former experience as a Security Manager for a similar company. This event was made all the more inane by the Managerial Harbingers of our Certain Doom walking calmly down the halls forcefully screaming, "this is not a drill." It occurs to me a more effective, if not certainly more entertaining, threat alert would be the same Managerial Harbingers of Certain Doom (MHCDs) to run down the aisles screaming with voices full of barely contained dread, "bend over, kiss yer ass g'bye, cause we're'll about ta die!" Because nothing says "End of Days" like poorly enunciated rhymes.

So the evacuation progressed as evacuations often do in the absence of immediate visual or sensory queues like dead bodies, or flaming corpses or people on fire soon to be dead and corpses. People slowly moved down stairwells to exits predefined in the evacuation plan no one has read. The heard of human cattle seemingly oblivious of the droning alarms and strobing klaxons were prodded forth by the helpful screams of their MHCDs. It was only then, many minutes later the building had been fully evacuated, this was signaled by the exit of the security staff who had, for the entire evacuation, been diligently visually monitoring their cell phones to make sure they did not miss any important text messages over the obtrusive commotion.

We waited outside for a little over an hour, loudly speculating as to the cause of the evacuation. Passing the time by incriminating our fellow coworkers with little to no conviction, and finally starting a pool to see who could accurately predict what precipitated the not so hasty evacuation. It turns out I lost the pool betting on the invasion of clown-midget-vampire-Eskimo-zombies... from outer space. As an aside, the building down the street was also evacuated, while they spray for clown-midget-vampire-Eskimo-zombies... from outer space.

With only 45 minutes of the work day remaining the MHCDs decided emergency services would not be finished in time for us to return to work so we were excused, with these final instructions: "Though the building is still likely to explode you are authorized to approach it to retrieve your vehicles."