Fire Drill

I had an interesting day yesterday and this interesting day is equivalent to a mismanagement of a certain company that, should I receive any injury whatsoever to my pregnancy, I shall use all skills and expertise of my legal knowledge to sue the company.

This company has fire drills year in year out to ensure that the staff are well prepared for any emergency. Last year, I received news that there will be a fire drill and went down earlier by lift so therefore, people like me will be first to enter the Heaven Gates as I do not know where are the emergency exits not until today.

We had a briefing yesterday for all pregnant ladies. As my tummy looked nothing like pregnant except for a bulging tummy that can be passed of as having extra fats, no one seems to know that I am pregnant, but for the fact that I was there for the briefing, it did not give them the benefit of a doubt.

It has been a practice in the company that the pregnant ladies and the handicapped are allowed to leave their work station before the actual fire drill begins, so that they can take the lift down (before the lifts are shut down) while other employees will have to take the staircase at the emergency exits. And that briefing is to tell us what to do and when to leave the office building. During the briefing, we were warned not to breathe a single word to our non-pregnant colleagues. Apparently, every year, some employees like me, will receive leak news and leave the building before the actual fire drill.

As the company placed such emphasis that all employees should participate in the fire drill, the management had contemplated to have the pregnant ladies walk down the emergency stair case so no news will leak out at all. I was like “WHAT!!! IT’S A ONLY FIRE DRILL FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!!” No way am I going down the freaking staircase and for crying out loud I am on the 21st floor. I am not risking Baby at all. Don’t they care about our welfare at all???

I know the guy who came up with the suggestion and he is a stupid china man with hair at the wrong end of this head, for he is bald-headed and he has this ugly looking long beard. Secretaries of all CEOs will be forewarned of the fire drill too so that they can inform their bosses and all CEOs will not be coming to work early on those days. Well, who do you think could leak the news out? The group of suspect is a bigger pool than the management thought. How idiot can those people be.

Due to humanity sake (*sacartistically*) they decided to give another try and would allow the pregnant ladies and the handicapped to leave earlier. But this time they will do it with more discreet. They came up with ideas like sms’ing or calling the hand phone (instead of the usual method where they will inform to leave the out building at a certain time, but this time around we will not know the hour and the day of the drill until minutes before) of one the pregnant lady who will be in charged of informing the rest of the pregnant ladies in the same department, to warn us to leave immediately, so as not to arouse the rest of the colleagues’ suspicion that there will be a fire drill. At the back of my mind, I had this doubt that it’s not going to work. Knowing our service provider there may be delay messages or no service at all. You know how things happen ONLY during emergency.

The morning started like usual and at 9.30a.m. my pregnant colleague called me and told me to leave now as they will start the fire drill soon. Okay, so I took my purse and my hand phone and walk out to the lift with 2 others pregnant ladies. And guess what, they shut down the lift and then they announce that there was a fire and asked us to leave the building immediately. I was like “I knew it!!! Those idiots did not inform us in time!” The rest of the employees were running towards the emergency exit and we were asked to follow. “NO WAY!” I refused to walk 21 floors down. My colleague who got the call from the management earlier, retrieve the number from her hand phone and called them to let them know that there are 3 pregnant ladies trapped on the 21st floor. They told us not to go down and to wait there. By that time, everyone has already deserted the floor and the alarm was ringing away. My heart was pounding due to the commotion and colleague’s baby was kicking cause it was too noisy.

We waited in our work station and then came about 5 men of the Rescue Team and found us inside our office. Well, one of the them had to stupidly asked “So! 2 orang kamu pregnant, ya!” (he was referring to my other 2 colleagues who are 7 and 8 months pregnant) Told you, no one seems to notice that I am pregnant. “NO! KAMI 3 ORANG!” I just raised my voice at him because of the noisy alarm and because I was annoyed too. His other team mate then nudged at him and said “3 orang lah”.

They took us to the emergency exit and there was a ‘Lift Bomba’. I was almost disappointed when the lift would not move when we hit the buttons. The leader of the Rescue Team wanted to make us walk down the stairs. And by God’s grace, the lift came up and took us down.

Once we were down, people were surprised to see us as according to them, they had warned us. “Yeah right! Your message did not come in time!” I told them. By then I was feeling nausea and had to sit at the medical ‘camp’. I met another pregnant lady who is 6 months pregnant. She received the warning only when the alarm for the fire drill went off, which was too late for her to take the lift. The Rescue Team found her in her room and made her walk down 10 flight of stairs! As this is her first pregnancy and she is much older than me, she was feeling weak and her husband had to come to take her home as she was worried about her baby. I hope all goes well for her.

The management was also looking frantically for one of the handicapped employee who was on the 16th floor. He was rescued by the Rescue Team who took him out from the building with a stretcher. By the time he reached the medical ‘camp’ he was having cramps on his legs.

The management was worried and they came checking on us to ensure that we are fine. Of course we are not fine. How could we be fine after all the mismanagement? If its real fire, I have no one to blame but this is only a drill and our welfare were not looked into. I told them, if anything should happen to me, I will SUE!!!

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