Fire drills are important so that everyone knows what to do if there is really a fire, but in today’s story, a building manager is completely unreasonable in his demands during a fire drill.

The employees are not happy, and the employee tasked with fire marshal duty uses malicious compliance to point out just how horrible the building manager is.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

I MUST check for anyplace a person can hide during a fire drill? OK. Let’s see how that works out for you…

Background.

I worked in a building where I was a fire marshal. No extra money and a small amount of extra work but someone has to do it.

I was also first aider and somehow got landed with arranging the christmas night out so maybe the building manager saw me as an easy mark.

The only advantage that I had was the during a drill or real event I had absolute power; anyone not following an evacuation order swiftly was called up for disciplinary action.

Here’s how the fire drills worked…

We had random drills about 12 per year, my job was to ensure that the building was clear, basically pop my head in each office space, toilets, kitchens etc and see that nobody was there and then take a register outside.

5 minutes tops.

Anyone booked into the building that was not registered by me was in trouble.

The drills were sprung on me as well as the building manager had the fire alarm keys and it made it a more realistic test.

The building manager tricked the fire marshal.

The building manager was a jerk.

He wielded his small amount of power as much as he could and loved to report people for tiny infractions.

During one drill he hid in a cupboard and then called me into his office for failing to ensure that the building was clear. Apparently some people may run and hide from a fire instead of leaving the building.

I got a wagging finger and told to do better next time or I would lose the marshal role, my ‘job’ was pretty safe since nobody actually wanted to take over and after hearing the story of me getting into trouble they absolutely did not want the job.

The building manager acted like he had more power than he did.

The Building manager changed the fire marshal Process Instruction to include checking hiding places.

This is a site instruction, he had no power to do so I later found out.

MC begins.

The fire marshal did a very thorough job this time.

The alarm went off, the first after my failure to check cupboards.

Every one left, crossed the road and stood in the assembly point in (and this is very important) the rain and wind.

I searched the top floor very carefully, opening up large cupboards, opening up boxes large enough to hide a person, looking under each desk in case someone was hiding.

First floor ditto (UK so our first floor is US second and our ground is US first).

The employees were not dressed for the weather.

By now people were cold and wet and unhappy, but building manager refused to let them enter.

He knew that it was coming. He was well prepared for the weather.

Most people had light clothing on as the car park stood next the the building. They don’t bother with coats in the 20 feet trip from car to building.

Ground floor checked everywhere and finally the basement where the boiler lives and is a general dumping ground for old files and junk.

That took ages but I was thorough. Very thorough. And slow. Thorough slow, not ‘taking the piss’ slow.

The employees understood who was to blame.

I left the building, took the register and a mass of sodden people headed back into the building.

I was massively unpopular until I showed them the PI that said I had to check all spaces that someone could hide.

They knew what happened at the last test and directed all the anger at building manager.

Everyone was mad at the building manager.

It was the equivalent of the angry villagers turning up at Castle Frankenstein with torches and pitchforks.

People were furious at him some.

One of the office staff was a union rep and reported him to the site safety officer who went ballistic at him telling me to remain in a potentially burning building longer than necessary and a number of people went home to get dry clothes and the company had to give them special leave to do so or else the union would have to get involved.

He got complaints from all sides, workers, union, management and site safety officer.

Most of the time nothing gets done when it is just you complaining ,but it really gets done when the correct people are inconvenienced.

It’s too bad so many employees had to stand in the rain in order to get a point across, but at least the malicious compliance worked!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader likes the moral of the story.

This reader has some good questions.

Another reader points out that nobody would be hiding from a fire.

This person offers some words of wisdom.

Here’s the perspective of a health and safety worker…

That building manager didn’t really care about anyone’s safety.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.