Walk, do not Run, to the Nearest Exit*

We're all about security at my office.

Safety first. Eternal vigilance. Protection prioritized.

I heard a rumor that we might even get new security cameras some day. We used to have one in the waiting room. It was a lifesaver. If you could memorize what kind of shoes your probationer wore, you could tell whether or not they were sitting in the lobby. If they sat in one of the first three chairs from the door, that is.

It was a nifty camera, but it had a terribly shallow angle of focus. We found the way to get maximum coverage of the room was to focus it was on the lower half of the door, below the door handle, and on the first three chairs. Then we could see the legs of anyone entering the building and the hang-dog looks on the faces of people who weren't quick enough to get a chair in the darker corners of the lobby.

Then there were the monitors. They blew themselves out after a year or so. After a few weeks of staring at dark, blank TV screens, we decided we could fix the problem. I drew a cartoon version of the unmoving picture that had previously graced the closed-circuit tubes and we pasted it to the monitor. No more blank screen!

We are all about the security.

Every few years one of us will go to some sort of officer safety seminar as part of the never ending pursuit of continuing education hours. We used to come back all gung-ho about taking precautions to ensure the continued inhale/exhale dichotomy of ourselves and our co-workers. But it never really stuck.

We do have an alarm system. Well, two alarm systems, actually. The new one is every bit as effective as a car alarm and we got tired of the continuous 2:00 a.m. phone calls from the police, who needed us to come verify that all was well with the building after yet another false alarm. We don't even bother to turn it on any more.

The other alarm is an old Sunday school buzzer. Y'all remember those? It's a button wired up at the edge of one of the receptionist's desk. The buzzer sounds in the big open area between our offices, known as the Grand Ballroom. She presses it if they are ever in fear of, well, anything.

In fourteen years, I can only remember one time that they actually used it. That time was pretty fun.

The problem is, we're forever thinking we heard the alarm go off. Usually it goes like this:

"Did you hear that?!"

"I'm not sure. Was it...?"

"I think it was!"

And we take off at a run, bursting through the door into the reception area.

And the secretary says: "Thank God you're here!"

Well, no. That's not what she says. It's more like "What the hell is wrong with y'all?" But I'm pretty sure she really means "Thank God you're here!" Probably.

It inevitably ends with us slinking back to our offices mumbling about how we know we heard something and if it wasn't the buzzer, what the hell was it and we're not really crazy, right?

We're all about security. Technology hasn't worked out all that well for us, so we've come to rely more on our own dauntless powers of observation and intuitive knowledge of human nature. Today was no exception. Witness this instant messaging conversation between myself and Princess Mindy:

She: Did you see that prissy guy that just came back down the hall? Where is he going?
Me: I dunno. I was just fixing to ask you the same thing.
Me: I bet he doesn't think he's prissy.
She: Well, he is. I was just hoping he didn't have a concealed handgun or something.
Me: If he does, it would be an itty bitty handgun.
Me: I'm just sayin'.
She: That's just wrong!

And that was the end of it. I never saw Mr. Prissy again. Don't know where he went, don't know what he did. Hell, he may still be in the office somewhere, for all we know.

Yeah, we're all about the security around here.


*Two weeks after 9-11, our county's safety officer (which is a whole 'nuther story) put a really insipid pamphlet into all our paycheck envelopes on how we could best survive a nefarious attack on the civil service of Fake Cow County. We responded by hanging a large poster with the words "IN CASE OF TERRORIST ATTACK: Walk, Do Not Run, to the Nearest Exit" in our office. He was not amused. Not. at. all.