Nightmare Telephone Conversations

[jim stone]

Nightmare telephone conversations, the first imaginary, the second real.

Hello, 911?

Yeah

I was just jogging before I go to work. There were three young men in front
of me. They were carrying rucksacks full of something. They didn't see me behind them, it's still dark. One of them said to the others: 'We'll go down onto the station and stand apart from
each other. Don't even look at each other. The train will come in at 6AM. Each will get on
a separate car. Wait till the doors close, then detonate. God is Great!' Then they went
down the stairs to the light rail.

So, uh... what do you want me to do about it?

This may be a terrorist attack. Call the police. If possible radio the train driver to stop the train before the station.

Well, I'd better talk that over with my supervisor. She'll be in later.

When?

Oh, uh... at 7 AM.

They're detonating in fifteen minutes! Don't you understand what I'm saying? This may be
a suicide bombing. Hundreds of people are about to die! For God's sake, do something!

How do you know they've really got explosives?

This one is real.

Hello, is this the St. Louis Fire Marshall's Office?

Yeah.

I want to report a fire hazard. I belong to a health club. There's a fire exit along the South wall;
it's locked from the inside. It's been locked since I joined, a month ago.

So, uh...what do you want me to do about it.

Tell them to unlock it.

How do you know it's a fire exit?

It's got a big red EXIT sign on top, it's got lights mounted next to it, and there's a redfire box mounted on the wall just next to it. The door is clear glass, you can see out into the parking lot.

Are there other fire exits?

Yeah, there's a main entrance about 100 feet away.

So...uh, what's the problem?

This is how people die in fires. The place is crowded. They see this exit. It's the only one
near them. They run to it. It's locked. They pile up and die.

Well...maybe they should take the EXIT sign off? What do you think?

No, people are going to go for this door in an emergency; it's big, it's glass, you
can see the parking lot....Hey, I've alerted you to something dangerous
please deal with it.

It's a violation of the fire code, I guess. But uh...how do you know it's locked?

I've tried to get out on fifteen different days. You turn the handle and push, the door
doesn't move.

OK, we'll look into it. Who should I talk to?

Try the manager...

Are you sure this address is in St. Louis?

Yes, yes, I'm sure.

One month later.

Hello, is this the Fire Marshall's Office?

Yeah.

I called in a month ago to report a fire hazard, a locked fire EXIT in a health club. It's
still locked.

We don't do doors.

The Fire Marshall doesn't do fire exits?

Nope.

Who does?

Call Leroy Wagner at 999-9628.

Ringing... 'Hello, this is Mr. Wagner. I'm away from my desk. Please leave your number
and I will get back to you.'

Several days later.

Hello, Mr Wagner?

Yes.

It's Jim Stone. I left a message.

Oh, yeah. I was about to call you.

It's about a locked fire exit......

Let me give you one of the inspectors, Mr.Stone. He'll be in that neighborhood today.

Five minutes on hold.

Hello, I'm Mr. Willis...

Hello, this is about a locked fire exit....

So, uh...what do you want me to do?

Tell them to unlock it.

How do you know it's locked?

I've tried to get out repeatedly. How do you tell a door is locked?

Well, I don't know....

Mr. Willis, this is how people die in fires. They run to the exit, it's locked, they pile up and die. This is potentially deadly...

Alright, I'll check it out. I'll call you back later...

Later...

Hello, Mr. Stone?

Yes.

It's Mr. Willis. I went to the place. You were right. I've straightened it out.
Thank you for calling us.

You bet, Mr.Willis. Have a nice day.

That was a week ago. Today I went to the health club for the first time since. I tried the fire
exit.

Locked.

[chas]

Maybe you can find a clipping from the fire in Prividence that was a scant two years ago, in which many perished because of locked fire exits. They found many bodies piled up right at the fire exits. Then there was the chicken processing plant in NC, 15 or so years ago. I thought business would have learned their lesson when the owners of that plant went to jail, but I guess not. A few people have gone to jail as a result of the Providence incident.

Show the stories to the fire people and tack them up if there's a corkboard at the health club. If there isn't, maybe you could tape them up.

[Lambchop]

That's worrisome. I'd be sorely tempted to stand outside with a Big Warning Sign.

This is what I'd do:

1. Speak to the manager.

2. Write to the parent company.

3. Have a nice chat with your local investigative reporter--the ones on the nightly news or with the newspaper. Be sure to reference those famous fires and provide a detailed list of everyone you talked to and what they said and did.

Step 3 is the most fun and usually the most productive.

[jim stone]

Thanks. I started out concerned about the locked exit.
Now I'm a good deal more concerned about the
Fire Marshall's Office. It never occured to me
that these folks are asleep at the switch...
One expects certain institutions to function,
whatever else doesn't. (Hence the imaginary
story). This is scary.

I hope you won't think less of me. I've spent
well over a month on this. More than most
people would do. I'll let it go at that.
An older but more frightened man.

I'm impressed by the role that sheer incompetence
and indifference play. You know, there are 100,000
deaths in hospitals reported each year credited to
simple mistakes, people being given the wrong
meds and so on. I think the
most recent stats are from 2002 or 3. That's about 274 needless
fatalities a day, every day.

And I know why.

[Henke]

God I hate stupid and arrogant people.

[djm]

You may get a better response by gathering the info on previous fires that involved deaths due to locked fire exits, plus a full accounting (including dates, times, and especially names) of your attempts to get the problem rectified at this particular health club, and taking it to your local newspaper. If its a cvil government office that is the culprit, having the name of the department at least, if not individuals' names, appear in print as incompetent bunglers usually gets a response from local government. A sympathetic reporter is necessary to get the full tone of ridicule in the article.

djm

[Wanderer]

you might also get a pretty good response if you manage to get local media to cover that story...that usually shakes government offices up...

[jim stone]

God I hate stupid and arrogant people.

I guess it's that they are incompetent and couldn't care less.

[Lambchop]

God I hate stupid and arrogant people.

I guess it's that they are incompetent and couldn't care less.

Incompetent people usually are unaware of their actions. They don't deliberately set out to be incompetent. It just happens by virtue of an inauspicious conjunction of circumstances and their minds.

Usually, it's not that they don't care, but that they don't "get it." If you call Person X and it's not his job, he can't do anything about it. He's supposed to refer you to Person Y. Person Y needs to ask you how you know the door is locked, because he gets calls from nut cases. He comes out and tells the person working at the time to unlock the door. They do, but then the next crew comes in and, having no instructions to unlock the door that was locked again the night before, fails to unlock it. The manager, having not been fined for his first offense, forgets about it.

Root cause analysis would probably show the problem to lie with the manager of the facility, who is clueless about the need to leave fire doors unlocked. This isn't the foremost priority in his mind. He's more concerned with selling memberships and keeping people from stealing towels (which may be why he locked the door in the first place).

If you spoke to the manager, and code enforcement spoke to them, and that door is still locked, then you'd do well to cancel your membership. Insist that they refund it because they are providing an unsafe facility.

If that fails to get their attention, then you are obliged to save others from a horrible fate, and that's why you have to go to the newspaper.

You don't have to end up in the newspaper story, either. Just relay the story confidentially.

[jim stone]

Perhaps and I see this differently.

I've been watching incompetent people for many years.
Universities are full of 'em. There is a sea urchin with a
rudimentary brain that it uses to find a rock to cling to.
Then it digests its brain. This has been likened to
tenure.

Incompetent people generally know it; and they become
defensive and try to surround themselves with
other incompetents so as not to have their noses
rubbed in what they already know.

In this case there is no 'night crew' at the health club,
nor a manager. There is a young woman who sits
at the desk reading a paper back all day; sometimes
she is replaced by another young woman with a
paper back. Neither leaves the desk in the front
or has anything to do with the doors. By all
indications, the fire door hasn't been touched in years.

Consider the long, strange first conversation I had with
the Fire Marshall's Office, resulting in no change.
I call a month later and I'm told the office has nothing
to do with what they said intitially they would do.

I'm referred to another number.. I asked the Fire Marshall's Office, when it
gave me the number, where these new people are located.
The answer: 'I don't know.'

Another long, strange conversation.

You're thinking the inspector didn't fine anybody or read them
the riot act? That's incompetent, right? Obviously if you
just make suggestions there is a strong possibility that
nothing will change. The Health Club is violating the
Fire Code, in fact. If he wasn't emphatic, he was incompetent.

If a Fire Inspector showed up, told them
the locked door is illegal, told them to unlock the door, is it realistic that they
wouldn't do so?
Why would they lock the door again, anyway. There's
another exit into the parking lot and it's always
unlocked from the inside. As mentioned, there is
nobody there who would lock the door again.

The most likely explanation is that nobody from
the Fire Marshall's Office or whomever I called
second ever went to the Health Club.

It is very good when things are arranged so that,
if you can't do your job or you couldn't care less,
you lose it. When things are not so arranged,
this is what you often get.

When I was teaching in Calcutta, at Jadavpur University,
there were very few philosophy books on the shelves.
I read a report from my American predecessor from
a year before. He said that there were 50 philosophy
books on the librarian's desk that she had never
placed on the shelves. In India job security is
paramount. It is almost impossible to lose your
job. So I went to the librarian's desk--there
were the 50 books, a year later. No surprise.

[alurker]

Jim;

I was in a similar position a couple of years back. That time it was in a building whereby the manager has resolved an issue with false alarms by disabling the alarm system . I complained a few times by phone to no avail. I then wrote a letter to the management company insisting that the issue be resolved immediately and claiming (falsely, as it happens) that I had lodged a copy of the letter with my solicitor. That did the trick. The alarm system was repaired and re-enabled the next day.

It seems that incompetence and reckless disregard for other peoples safety disappears when there is a danger that the person responsible may be held accountable. It's not the thought of people dying in a fire that got action (they knew there was a risk from the time the alarm was disabled) but rather the thought that the manager might end up being held responsible and spending time in jail.

[Redwolf]

Jim;

I was in a similar position a couple of years back. That time it was in a building whereby the manager has resolved an issue with false alarms by disabling the alarm system . I complained a few times by phone to no avail. I then wrote a letter to the management company insisting that the issue be resolved immediately and claiming (falsely, as it happens) that I had lodged a copy of the letter with my solicitor. That did the trick. The alarm system was repaired and re-enabled the next day.

It seems that incompetence and reckless disregard for other peoples safety disappears when there is a danger that the person responsible may be held accountable. It's not the thought of people dying in a fire that got action (they knew there was a risk from the time the alarm was disabled) but rather the thought that the manager might end up being held responsible and spending time in jail.

This is a huge, and very good, point. Put stuff in writing. Write a letter to the manager of the individual health club (and to its managing company, if it's a chain) and cc it to the fire marshall and to your local Better Business Bureau, outlining the problem (i.e., the door, clearly marked as a fire door, is always locked. You've tried it on various days. Mention the other fires in which people have died). Make sure they have your contact information, and say that you will withdraw your membership (and contact local media) if the problem isn't corrected within 30 days.

Putting things in writing, and making sure that all involved know that other authorities are aware of the problem, is a great way to get action.

Redwolf

[Doug_Tipple]

For several years I was a high school math teacher in a prosperous mountain community in northern Arizona. One year the school administration waited until the beginning of the school year to reroof the whole school. Of course, I wondered why this couldn't have been done during the summer break. Anyway, as the reroofing began, the first thing that happened was that the school ventilation system was turned off because of the boiling tar pots that were adjacent to the school. However, the construction of most modern schools requires electric ventilation, as the windows cannot be opened for ventilation. Without ventilation, during the school day the students were listless, falling asleep in class, and complaining of headaches. I tried to communicate my concern to the high school administation, but I received no satisfactory response. Finally, in frustration I called the county health department. My thought was that if you don't have a healthy space to have school, then you need to discontinue school until you can provide a healthy learning environment.
Can you guess the reply of the health department? That's right, school must go on, no matter what.

[talasiga]

................
Putting things in writing, and making sure that all involved know that other authorities are aware of the problem, is a great way to get action.

.............

"Yes, Minister."

[fearfaoin]

The good news is that health clubs have poor profit margins and
frequently go out of business or change management, so I'm willing
to bet it will lock all its doors from the outside before anyone has
a chance to die in a fire.
</cynic>