Never a Dull Moment

I never realized just how insulated my office space was until today. I came out of my cubby and walked towards the kitchen for a coffee and stopped short when I saw 2 paramedics and a firefighter standing in the reception area.

Turns out, our Payroll Coordinator was having some sort of a panic attack and we'd dialed 911 for help. The paramedics showed up and had began working on my colleague for about 10 minutes before I'd even realized that something was amiss!

They ascertained that although not in any immediate danger, she would need to be moved to a hospital.

Then came the fun part!

Our office building is roughly about 120 years old. Built way before the times of notions of complete accessibility etc etc. There is a short - but steep - flight of stairs from the street to the elevators, that are themselves rather small and pokey. One of my colleagues went off to find the building manager to check about the freight elevator while the firefighters went off to check the exit access to the street.

The building manager was nowhere to be found, and so they ended up having to take her down in the regular elevators (the stretcher folds up into sitting position) and then between them they carried it down the flight of stairs to the street.

Lessons learned:
1. We need to know how to contact the building manager in a hurry.
2. We need to know how to access ALL exit routes on the floor. (Some of my colleagues didn't even know there was a service elevator)
3. Firefighters are hot hot hot tamales! The stereotype is SO true in this case.