Fire

What a day I have had. I made an appointment for my son this morning. When I got to the doctors office a prerecorded voice over the intercom system kept repeating "Attention: Dr. Red, Fourth Floor". I know enough to know that isn't a good thing. Yet when I looked around  me I saw seated patients waiting around, nurses and receptionists standing around gabbing about weekend plans and cartoons cheerfully playing on the TV. I decide to stand up and leave because I don't want to find out what a page for "Dr. Red" stands for when some sort of administrator comes out and says "I don't know if this is a drill or not, but I think we need to evacuate"
Let me point out all the things wrong with this.
1. If its a drill, you flunk. Hard. This alarm was going off when I walked in the door, and didn't stop throughout check in, and asking to be seated. Every employee in Smith Glenn Calloway Pediatrics straight up ignored a fire alarm for at least over 5 minutes.
2. It wasn't a drill. There was a fire upstairs. As I walked out the door a fire truck was pulling in to the parking lot. Extra fail.
3. Super deluxe failure status- I was one of the first people out of the building. Tons more trickled out long after I did. I don't even know how long the alarm was going off and I was probably the last to come in, but the first one out. The alarm went off long enough for the fire department to ARRIVE as I was walking out the door. That isn't very promising.
It wasn't a huge inferno or anything and it was resolved in about 45 minutes but if it had been some other sort of emergency I now have a pretty good idea of how Mercy staff will handle it: By standing around doing nothing. That's pretty scary considering they are medical personnel responsible for the care of patients. It's only a matter of time before we all have Ebola at this rate.