Today was an overly exciting day at the office.

It started out normal enough; early morning wake up and shake fist at alarm clock, brush teeth, locate and don real pants, drive 45 minutes to the office listening to an audiobook about how to live a more creative life, etc. etc.

I logged in, plugged in headphones to listen to electro-swing music to dance embarrassingly in my clandestine cubicle with no visible neighbors. Steaming cup of paris tea in hand, I began trudging through emails, firing off questions, troubleshooting problems for about an hour or so.

Then I noticed sort of a weird smell. It was like someone had left a curling iron on.

No, that wasn’t it. It was more like, someone had left a curling iron on top of their hairbrush, slowly melting it into a pool of molten sludge.

Weird.

While I sat contemplating the exact aromas I was experiencing, I also, like any sane self-preservation motivated human being, …kept working? Yes. Like a complete square, I kept typing, and chatting with co-workers online, commenting on how the floor of my building “sure did smell weird.”

After an amount of time I choose to not admit to you, one of the engineers stood up and said “OK, that’s it. Everyone out!”

I stood up and saw the plume of smoke that had started creeping down the hallway towards my corner cubicle, and started shoving my stuff into my backpack (also not protocol for an evac.) I then followed the other lemmings down the stairwell and out into the parking lot, with the others shooting me death stares that I’d had time to pack up my stuff for a swift departure, as opposed to standing in the parking lot for an indiscriminate amount of time waiting for the fire trucks to arrive.

On the way out of the building, I heard others saying that the fire alarm hadn’t been pulled…because no one knew where it was. Bonkers! Who’s going to save me when I have electro-swing blaring in my ears and I’m too emotionally invested in my olfactory experiences than the cause of them?!

What caused the smoke you ask? I still have no idea. One woman said something was burning in the first-floor kitchen and it filled the whole building (what?), another person said there was a short circuit on a ballast….which is used in roofs, or is some sort of gravel…or is on a ship.

So I have no idea.

All in all, it was an ideal experience for capturing lessons learned. Lesson one, if you smell something burning, make sure your third-floor office building isn’t slowly burning to the ground around you while you send off superfluous email correspondence – your life is more important.

Lesson two – maybe take note of where the fire alarm is, in the event lesson one is required.

Lesson three – …maybe just work from home from now on. It’s very peopley outside and it smells like burned plastic.