The secret is in the planning (again)
The gang at the office came together today. Any time you offer free coffee, donuts and assorted other tasties, the office comes together – it’s a rule. And following the rules of management science, we had a meeting with an agenda, goals and boss monologues. For what it’s worth, there was a rational reason. It was time to discuss emergency measures.
Simple rules for simple situations. If you see a fire, sound the alarm and leave the building. Ditto for an odour of natural gas, or the rumble of an exploding furnace. If you don’t know the way out, consult the diagrams on the walls, fully illustrated in colour and labelled in two languages. Simple.
When the call for volunteers to serve as area wardens came, I had a sudden flashback, to even simpler times. Back to the end of the ’50’s, when we were all preparing for imminent attack at the hands of our enemies. Civil Defense, with a logo, signs in capital letters, sirens and a symbol on our AM radios that showed where to tune for CONELRAD (remember, capital letters were the key to survival).
My father was a member of the CD team in Charlottetown, with training sessions, ropes and bandages, neat manuals that showed me basic first aid and how to hide behind a brick wall if I saw a bright flash (that I supposed must be much brighter than the flashbulbs on our Brownie Hawkeye). In fact, some of the pamphlets are available here, thanks to the foresight of civil minded individuals that knew a website would some day be available. How old is Al Gore, in passing?
I’ll have to make a decision. Will I follow the civic lead of my father and volunteer as a warden in the office, or will I avoid involvement? Should I make my office a safer place to be? I had better review those pamphlets, in case our office faces imminent attack from those “nu-cu-lar” weapons I keep hearing about on Fox News.
