Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A land where they don't work 24/7

Today Matt had a PowerPoint breakdown for a presentation he is giving at school tomorrow. So instead of snuggling in for a movie after dinner tonight, he had to go back to school to finish his presentation. He had been gone for about 4 hours when I received this email:

From: Matt
Subject: Trying to come home now...
Date: November 19, 2008 10:32:16 PM
To: Laura

…but I can’t figure out how to get out of the building. All the doors are locked.

Guess graduate students don't pull all nighters here in their office - heck, apparently they don't even work past ten...

3 comments:

Matt said...

After trying to open every door (and following the hallways behind those doors that did open to dead ends), I happened upon an "Emergency Numbers" list. This was good news, because I suspected '911' would not be effective in this country. (So now I know that the correct number in The Netherlands - should you ever need it yourself - is '112'.) A quick dial of that number lead to a rendezvous with the night watchman, who mercifully released me from the confines of the building.

It's a good thing I didn't follow my first instinct, which was to pull the fire alarm and hope all of the doors would unlock automatically...

Anonymous said...

I know that it would have taken all of my will power not to pull the fire alarm. Not so much as to get out of the building but, to cause mischief. Kinda like when you're leaving a store and the anti-theft system alarm goes off, even though I haven't stolen anything I still want to run, just to cause trouble.

Matt said...

Rich, I understand the feeling. My other instinct in that situation is to curse Old Navy for hiding those !@$)($&!@$ RFID tags in my clothes where I can't find them.

Three other items on my list of "bad ways to get out of this situation":
1. Wave hysterically at one of the many security cameras and hope someone notices.
2. Throw a chair through the glass of an exterior exit.
3. Collect rubber bands from the office supply cabinet; braid a rubber band rope and use it to rapel from the 1st floor to the ground floor via an internal balcony; next, hope a door on the 1st floor is unlocked. Otherwise, return to one of the other options.