Lights started flashing and this annoying buzzing sound filled the office. I looked over to my fellow cow-orker. “It's the fire alarm,” he said.
“Does that mean we have to lock our workstations before leaving?”
“Yes.”
Work stations thus locked, we ambled out with the rest of the night crew into the early morning air. The entire building is abuz with the fire alarm and the security guard is running around getting everybody out and trying to locate the the cause. The skeletal crew mill about, joking about what the cause might be.
Some ten minutes later a fire truck arrives, pulls into the parking lot, does a U-turn and leaves. A minute later the alarms go silent. The crew start their migration back inside The Company.
Our enforced break is now over.