Burglar Alarms

Specifically, the one at work.

Spent my usual 8 am to 6 pm at work Friday, and after we'd finished putting things away it was about 6.15 pm by the time we got to the back door. We were just about to put in the code when one girl noticed the orange Trouble light was on, and the display screen said Fuse. Not good....and even less good that we'd noticed it. If we hadn't seen it, it would have been unfortuate if the alarm hadn't been set correctly over the weekend, but we wouldn't have known anything about it. But as it was, we had to sort it out.

We went back to Reception, called the Reception Manager (it was her day off) and she agreed that we had to ring the Alarm Company. The switchboard girl put me through to some department, and they said an engineer would ring. The phones were set up to direct all calls to the Out-of-Hours Urgent Care service, so I gave her my mobile number instead. She said the engineer should ring within 30 minutes. After about 20 minutes there'd been no call, then I realised there was no signal on my phone, probably because of all the metal shutters on the windows!!!

The Manager has a seperate line in her office, so I went up and finally managed to divert it downstairs . I rang the alarm people back and gave them the new number. Then I rang the RM again to let her know what was happening and she said that one of the other receptionists could go home but I musn't be there on my own (I'm the most senior member of staff there so I knew I had to stay). My Mum had turned up to give me a lift home so I told her to come in and said the others could go home.

I also rang the Practice Manager (she finished at lunchtime) to let her know what was happening but she was out so I just left a message. Then the engineer rang and said he was about 20 minutes away, so we sat and waited.

He finally got there and changed the fuse in box, setting the alarm off in the process - it was VERY LOUD!!!!!! I ran off to put the code in, and he rang his base because we're linked to the police station so they had to cancel the call.

Finally got in at 7.50pm!!