The other night my friends and I went out to dinner before going to a movie. We went to this restaurant and had a good time, laughing, reminiscing, and catching up. Towards the end of the meal, the fire alarms went off. The first reaction of my friend Imke and myself? Ugh, stop that annoying noise! There was no visible smoke. Dawn was more proactive; she thought we should leave. We sat there for a few moments, and when we saw a line of guys from the bar start to walk out, we got up. It was like a wave--everyone eventually got up and walked out of the restaurant very calmly.
I remarked about this out loud, and some guy did a fake panic scream for me. We all gathered along the sidewalk and noticed that it was the whole building that had alarms going off, not just our restaurant. We looked at our watches and noticed that the movie would start in about 15 minutes, so we just went to the movie theater. Yay, a free meal! At the movie theater, we started seeing fire engines arriving. Was there really a fire?
The thing that struck me was the fact that so many people were desensitized to the alarm. Yes, we didn't panic, but we also didn't get moving. That's a little scary. I bet if we had seen smoke there would have been a mad dash, and people would have gotten hurt. Dawn was amazed that no one was in charge. No staff person ever came out to tell us to leave or stay put, or anything. That was also scary.
In the end, I hope it was just that a cook burned the fries or it was a false alarm. It was nice to have a free meal. It was delicious, too.
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