‘Do you smell that?’ I frowned, looking up from my desk. Gary, my cubicle buddy, looked up too.
‘It wasn’t me this time,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Your complaint to HR have been duly noted.’
‘No, idiot,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘That smell. Is it… is it smoke?’
He took in a deep, apprehensive lungful of air, and frowned, joining me in standing up.
‘Damn, that is smoke,’ he said. ‘God, wouldn’t it suck if the building was on fire and we had to miss an entire work day—’
I shut him up with a gesture, and looked around the office. A few other people were standing up too, nervous faces appearing from behind the professionally installed commercial partition wall.
‘What are you all doing?’ our boss called out, stomping into the bullpen from his corner office. With his sleeves rolled up and his suspenders gleaming in the fluorescent light, he couldn’t have looked more like an 80s villain if he’d tried.
‘Can you smell that, sir?’ a brave voice called out from the crowd.
‘All I can smell is laziness,’ he shot back at him. His nose twitched, and his frown deepened. ‘Also, some smoke. I’m sure it’s nothing. Back to work!’
‘Shouldn’t we… evacuate?’ a short woman with a mousy voice asked him from the cubicle next to mine.
‘Do you hear an alarm?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘Someone probably just burnt their toast. Besides, we paid for the best fire resistant plasterboard available for a Melbourne office, you’ll all be fine.’
Almost as if it had been waiting for him to finish speaking, the sprinkler system kicked on, dousing us all with water and causing a few shouts of surprise from the workers. Nobody moved an inch though.
Our boss sighed, brushing a stream of water from his considerable forehead and checked his watch. An alarm suddenly began to blare throughout the building.
He nodded and gestured for the stairwell.
‘Now you can go.’
We almost trampled one another as we ran for the exit.