Fire in the hole!

So dude, like, you had to be there. My building was like, totally on fire. Ohmigod. It was like, we had to evacuate, and I like, had to walk down, like, 32 flights of stairs. It was like, sooo smoky. Ohmigod.

Yes, this restaurant on the first floor of my building had a pretty serious fire. We had to evacuate via the steps. Lots of steps. For the kind of emergency that it was, people were relatively calm. Some were a little too calm. While I wasn't ready to run down 32 flights of steps, I was kind of in a rush. This guy in front of me, however, was more interested in looking up at one of his co-workers on the stairs above him. He waved to her about ten times on the way down. He'd stop to get her attention. Asshole! There is a fire. Get out. Stop, drop and roll your ass!

There were some mixed reports on the way down the stairs on where the fire actually was. There are two restaurants that could have been where the fire originated: Martini's or Rosie O'Grady's. On the way down, I'm guessing on about the 25th floor, some lady on her cell phone heard some people debating where it may have started. She blurts out, "It was Rosie O'Grady's! I confirmed it. It's Rosie's! Yeah, I just confirmed it!"

She actually said that. She "confirmed" it. Thank God for that woman. It was essential that someone had the presence of mind to confirm which restaurant was going to burn to the ground.

Once we got to the lower floors, you could smell the smoke. It wasn't overbearing at all. It was sort of like sitting next to a campfire. But if you asked the guy behind me, he was in the middle of a blazing inferno. He called his wife or girlfriend or maybe his mother to alert her to the situation.

"Yeah. There's a fire. It's craaaazy. There's all this smoke. COUGHCOUGHAKLJFHL:DIHFKBIBECIU EABCOUGGHGHGHGCOUUGGGHGHGHGH!!!!"

I've met people with lung cancer, emphysema and whooping cough who coughed less than this guy. He was totally trying to get some action when he got home.

"Hey baby. I almost died today. Let's do it. And when I say 'it', I mean sex!"

So I finally got to the bottom of the building after the most annoying evacuation ever. It was there that I heard that it was Martini's, not Rosie O'Grady's that had the fire. But wait! I know someone that confirmed it! It can't be! IT WAS CONFIRMED BY A LADY ON A CELL PHONE! Lady needs to check her sources.

Crisis averted. I'm back at work today. It was scary for a moment or two yesterday, but no one really freaked out, which was nice. I got nervous when I realized that three hours earlier I deleted some gay chain letter email thing which warned me that if I didn't forward it to ten people, I'd probably get raped by a monkey or hit by a double decker bus, possibly driven by a convicted rapist monkey. I was tempted to scream out while I was walking down the stairs, "IT'S ALL MY FAULT! I DELETED A CHAIN LETTER! I'M SO SORRY! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"

Looking back, I totally should have done that. For me though, the chain letter brought good luck. I got to leave work early! Send me your chain letters, folks! I'm going to delete the shit out of them.

I walked by the restaurant later on last night and saw some of the employees from Martini's looking around the restaurant. There seemed to be mostly water damage, but I don't know what the kitchen may have looked like. They looked sad, kind of like they might not have a job for a while. Stupid fire. I hate fire. As Frankenstein would say, "Fire bad!"


- Dara Kushner/INF-Goff