FIRE!

Sometimes at work we have so much to do that we have to work all night. (I've said before, there's A LOT more to running a clothing store than just folding clothes.) The night of December 23rd was one of those nights. The store was open until midnight, then a small group of us was scheduled to stay several more hours.

At about 10:30p.m. Andrea and I went back to one of the offices that sit side by side just off the backroom. Both office doors were open. The empty office can be used by the District Manager, but he is based out of Logan, so we use that office to store our marketing. The other office is used by the management team to run the store. Andrea and I went back to the office to print some signs for some markdowns that we were working on. I gave Andrea what she needed and I was going to stay in the office to print some things. Andrea walked away and then started yelling: "FIRE!! FIRE!!! THERE'S A FIRE!!!" I jumped up and ran out of the office, and sure enough the chair in the District Managers office was on fire! It was really on fire! The flames were over a foot tall!!! I yelled into the walkie-talkies that we wear for Trish to get back to the backroom RIGHT NOW! Then, I grabbed the fire extingisher and put the fire out!! Using a fire extingisher is just like it seems in the movies. At this point Trish comes running into the backroom and asked: "What the heck is going on back here?!" Then she smells the fire, sees the smoke, hears me and Andrea coughing, and is: speechless. Sometimes there is just nothing to say. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to air out the back room, cleaning up the mess from the fire extinguisher, filing incident reports, and just trying to keep things under control. A little while later I was sitting at one of the two computers in the office (the office that didn't catch on fire) and Trish came in and sat down. She asked me if I was okay and all I could do was laugh. I laughed until I cried, the kind of laugh that makes your belly hurt. She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. When I got myself under control again all I could tell her was that sometimes you have to laugh so you don't cry.