Advanced electronics... but not so much

On Thursday, the fire alarm went off at work. The alarm system has several different messages and this one was: "There is an incident in another part of the building. Please remain where you are and await further instructions."

It played over and over. This has happened before - and it's sometimes taken them quite a while to switch it off. However, after about ten minutes I rang reception to let them know it was still going. It took a while for someone to answer the phone and then:

Me: "Hello, the alarm is still on. What's going on?"
Voice: "Why are you still in the building?! There's a fire!"
Me: "Because the alarm system is telling us to remain where we are?!"
Background voice as can be heard over the phone: "There is an incident in another part of the building. Please remain where you are and await further instructions."
Voice: "Oh. We need to do something about that."

Then one of my staff (who was due back from lunch) rang and asked me why I was still inside (I didn't need to answer, the message was still playing). He told me there were two fire engines outside.

After a quick discussion, those of us still in the office decided to leave.

We trundled down the stairs. At floor 6, the message was a different one. "This is an emergency. Please leave the building by the nearest exit. Do not use the lifts."

At the bottom we were met by someone telling us not to worry, it was a small fire.

Cliff said quietly in my ear: "Not to worry? If it had been a large fire we could have burned to death!"

We were soon let back in. We later received an email explaining that a toaster had caught fire on the sixth floor (the toaster wasn't allowed in the building and had been removed). All the floors from six downward had evacuated whilst us lucky souls on seven, eight and nine had received a different message. They were investigating.

We weren't impressed.