Smoke in the Kitchen

Life has a great way of throwing you a wide variety of curveballs. 

The more life you take in, the more curveballs you notice, until it gets to the point where you can’t even take the time to really notice the curveballs anymore. 

Not to say you become ambivalent or unaware, I guess you just learn to roll with it. When you’re in on the ground floor of a brand new TV network, rolling with the curveballs becomes a major part of the process – from what I’ve seen you’ve got to be alert and flexible.

So speaking of curveballs – a smoky odour makes its way up through the ventilation ducts from the ground-floor restaurant. An alert moderator, working the weekend shift, detects this olfactory disturbance and promptly begins going through the textbook procedures of what to do in case of fire. There was no fire of course, just some steak left to become excessively well done. However, that not being known at the time, the mod had no choice but to make the call and pull the switch. 

So yesterday an email goes out to all of us: ‘be alert in case of fire – also, be aware burning food does not smell like burning building...’ 

This is a valuable bit of information not to be understated. On that note, today when I walked into the building I smelt something – something a bit out of place...

Burning former warehouse that’s now the home of a brand new television station? 

No...

Cookies?

As I diligently made way to the fire-alarm lever I was stopped by our fantastic office coordinator, a plate of slightly-singed chocolate-chip cookies in hand;

"Okay, I know they're a bit burnt but if you pull the alarm now the firefighters will never respond to a call from here again."

I took it all in:  

Step 1 - Be aware; those are cookies, not burning cinder blocks.

Step 2 - Deftly remove your hand from the fire alarm lever and step away. 

Step 3 - Consume cookies. Nom nom nom nom nom nom, mmmmmmmm....