Sunday, May 6, 2007

What Hath Orville Wrought?


This really happened…

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after lunch one blustery afternoon, the fire alarms sounded in my suburban office building, and we had to evacuate to the parking lot. The fire department came, and at that point we decided that it was something more serious than our annual fire drill.

After about 30 minutes, we were allowed to return to our desks.

As it turns out, someone left a bag of popcorn in the microwave a little too long. The popcorn was burned and the smoke triggered the alarms. I can only imagine the jokes at our expense around the dinner table at the firehouse later that evening.

Anyway, the next day an all employees memo was e-mailed to us. The management of our building has “banned the potentially life-threatening practice of popping popcorn in microwaves.”

I know popcorn isn’t the healthiest snack, but life threatening? Sheesh…

I wonder what’s next. I have both an electric pencil sharpener and an electric eraser at my desk. I guess if you’re not careful, you could put somebody’s eye out with either one of those things…

I also have a pair of scissors, but have never felt compelled to run with them in my hand.

We also have automatic flush valves on the urinals in all of the men’s rooms. I shudder to think at what might happen if one of those bad-boys malfunctions. Perhaps we should ban…?


Well, never mind…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How does an electric eraser work?? I so want one!

Corey Reynolds said...

Uh oh, maybe your HR people knew something we didn't: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/06/AR2007050601089.html?hpid=moreheadlines