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My new workplace is having drills for what to do if there's an armed intruder. So much for fire and tornado drills.
The drill consists of everyone getting off the floor and into the nearest available office. Then, to ward off the gun-toting maniac, it's a three-step process.
1. Shut the door.
2. Lock the door.
3. Turn off the light.
Yes, we're engaging the equivalent of using blankets to ward off monsters in the night. Our best idea of dealing with a terrorist or worker gone postal is to seal ourselves in with no exit and cower in the dark. To fight terror.
Stupid, sure. But it's paid time off the phones, so why not appease the idiots in charge?
Now come monday, we're getting the police involved in an "armed intruder drill". The police will be sending a man in with a gun loaded with blanks to play the part of an assailant. There will be cards to mark the killed and wounded. And we're to play dead if caught.
Also part of the drill, we're not to call 911... we're to call building security... which would be the folks slain in the entryway. Yanno, to train us on what we're supposed to do in an actual emergency.
I happen to sit facing the short corridor leading to the entryway. The only way any assailant would not see me as the first target after our minimal and naturally unarmed security would be if they snuck in with the smokers and crept up the far stairwell to wreak havoc on the collections department. At the point the armed man would step into view, I'd be seated... and he'd be closer to the row of offices than I. I'd have my choice of paths to run away being no cover or no room to maneuver...
I'm an office temp doing customer service. I am, and I wish to be clear, NOT hired to participate in wargames as Civilian Casualty #3, nor does my job description entail the firing of blanks in my vicinity.
Worse, of course, if I hurl my chair at the assailant and were to subdue him? I'd be commiting assault on a police officer.
But the strangest of all? Nobody seems to grasp why, given the above... I would take the day off and ensure that I am across town getting new tires on my car rather than mess with this horribly demented and harmful plot to prepare us for slaughter.
I think I prefer thinking these guys are just nuttily misguided. The sane part of my mind that looks into repercussions thinks that if there were, say, a building manager that wanted to go postal, but insisted on checking police response times and getaway routes (perhaps having substantial insurance on the employees) before committing murder and mayhem... this would be a fairly ideal method of ensuring local law enforcement and the employees would perform predictably.
The drill consists of everyone getting off the floor and into the nearest available office. Then, to ward off the gun-toting maniac, it's a three-step process.
1. Shut the door.
2. Lock the door.
3. Turn off the light.
Yes, we're engaging the equivalent of using blankets to ward off monsters in the night. Our best idea of dealing with a terrorist or worker gone postal is to seal ourselves in with no exit and cower in the dark. To fight terror.
Stupid, sure. But it's paid time off the phones, so why not appease the idiots in charge?
Now come monday, we're getting the police involved in an "armed intruder drill". The police will be sending a man in with a gun loaded with blanks to play the part of an assailant. There will be cards to mark the killed and wounded. And we're to play dead if caught.
Also part of the drill, we're not to call 911... we're to call building security... which would be the folks slain in the entryway. Yanno, to train us on what we're supposed to do in an actual emergency.
I happen to sit facing the short corridor leading to the entryway. The only way any assailant would not see me as the first target after our minimal and naturally unarmed security would be if they snuck in with the smokers and crept up the far stairwell to wreak havoc on the collections department. At the point the armed man would step into view, I'd be seated... and he'd be closer to the row of offices than I. I'd have my choice of paths to run away being no cover or no room to maneuver...
I'm an office temp doing customer service. I am, and I wish to be clear, NOT hired to participate in wargames as Civilian Casualty #3, nor does my job description entail the firing of blanks in my vicinity.
Worse, of course, if I hurl my chair at the assailant and were to subdue him? I'd be commiting assault on a police officer.
But the strangest of all? Nobody seems to grasp why, given the above... I would take the day off and ensure that I am across town getting new tires on my car rather than mess with this horribly demented and harmful plot to prepare us for slaughter.
I think I prefer thinking these guys are just nuttily misguided. The sane part of my mind that looks into repercussions thinks that if there were, say, a building manager that wanted to go postal, but insisted on checking police response times and getaway routes (perhaps having substantial insurance on the employees) before committing murder and mayhem... this would be a fairly ideal method of ensuring local law enforcement and the employees would perform predictably.
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