I don\'t believe it!

[lizcam]

So here I am sitting here taking escalated calls from drunken people who want to resolve billing issues on hotel rooms after hours on Christmas day when one of our agents gets an incoming call that there\'s a bomb in the building. The call center was named by city (policy states we do not give out names of agents or city locations of our call centers) and our Director was named individually.

Normal policy in this case would be to empty the building into the parking lot and have the police sweep the building for anything that might be a bomb. What does our upper management deside to do? Leave everyone on the phones and have the security guard poke around.

When complaints were made about that they finally called the police and the corp offices back east. What did they deside? It was more cost effective to leave everyone in the building working than to shut us down untill the sweep was done.

I smell someone suing. They told anyone who left for fear of thier safty that this would go against thier attendance. This is at the very least going to be an HR nightmare for the next few days. At most there still is a bomb in the building (the police didn\'t do much because of all the people in the building) and I\'ll be home in a body bag. If that happens make sure Mr C sues the pants off the place! :cussing:

 

[DrEvilmonki]

Sounds like a leak to the media could be called for.

 

[JesterzUSMC]

Yeah, wouldn\'t THIS be a good time to spend that HOMELAND SECURITY budget?
I mean WTF!:cussing:

 

[freakinacage]

well i certainly hope you don\'t end up in a bady bag!

 

[Roger Bunting]

That is seriously stupid. I hope we hear it\'s been resolved and everyone is safe and well, except the upper management etc who should be taking swimming lessons with electric eels.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Roger Bunting
That is seriously stupid.

I\'ll say!

Einion

 

[lono]

There will be written regulations about this sort of thing. Check \'em, see if they broke policy, if so do the gits for as much as you can.

I\'m not normally one to hop on the \"sue them\" bandwagon, but when it comes to idiotic managers potentially endangering my safety I think I\'d make an exception.

 

[mud duck]

Ok..... WTF!?!

This sounds like a serious problem. The company sounds like it has other call centers, right? They couldn\'t route them to those as the police did their sweep? I mean, yes it could have be a \"prank\", but most companies that I\'ve worked for would have cleared the employees as a matter of principal, no mater even if the phone call sounded \"hooky\". Sounds like your company has a major proceeder problem that has to be addressed, and soon! OCHA or the state may be needed to look into this. I guess it was a prank from the sounds of things, but a really stupid one, something like 10 years in a state/federal prison. Hopefully your companies leadership will pull it\'s collective head out of it\'s third point of contact, and fix this little problem. Good to hear that everyone is Ok thou.
Brian

 

[lizcam]

So I\'m alive and kicking. I\'m not sure what\'s going to happen with this whole thing. They didn\'t read the emergency manual until after the whole thing was over and then discovered that they should have cleared the building before any calls were made or anything. I\'m looking forward to going to work and seeing who\'s taking the fall for this one. I think it\'s time to look for a new job. Obviously this place doean\'t give a ras ass about thier employees. Too bad to. They used to be such a good company to work for until the bean coumters took over.

 

[mud duck]

Originally posted by lizcam
.....They didn\'t read the emergency manual until after the whole thing was over and then discovered that they should have cleared the building before any calls were made or anything.......

Oh I really hope that they didn\'t use that as an excuse Liz. I mean in this day and age, you would hope that someone has the brains to know that bomb threats can be real and that they can take down a building quite easily. I would hope that someone also will take a stand on the whole \"If you leave for your safety, we\'re docking you to time\" thing. I mean \"No sir! I\'ll stay. It\'s only the building is on fire....\"

<sigh> Some peoples children. </sigh>

 

[NINJAWIZARD]

Hit \'em with a stick!

No seriously, hit \'em real hard. That kinda management is bull scat. I\'d love to see them enforce the \"leaving goes against your attendance\" record. I just wonder how they\'d pull that off.

I mean it, go hit \'em.

 

[wiccanpony]

Glad all is well............I believe someone is going to get a stern tongue lashing over this. I say leak it to the news, sense when does the $ rate over life.

:cussing:

 

[Roger Bunting]

Glad to hear you\'re okay, Liz.

The cost effectiveness thing is down righ ridculous. It doesn\'t even make sense with their logic. If it had been a real threat (I\'m assuming they\'ve found it was a hoax?) then I would think dead and injured employees would cost them a whole lot more than some missed calls.

 

[Arma]

That is insanity... When material possession become more valuable than life, something is wrong. I guess they\'re thinking the ole \"it won\'t happen to use\" as well.

Glad you\'re ok, Liz.

 

[matty1001]

I thought this thread would be about \'One foot in the grave\' lol

But thats pretty serious...glad you\'re alright though.

We had one bomb threat at John Lewis, and if there was suspicion they called Time Check over the intercom, and us staff had to get on our toes for evacuation, and start looking at how to get customers out, i.e if there were women with pushchairs or disabled people.
Luckily it was just a hoax so it didn\'t step up to red alert. (But it wouldn\'t have required changing the bulb lol )

 

[Arkzein]

Utterly ridiculous given the information they had as well. Even if just the last in a series of hoax calls there would be no excuse. We had more than 50 after the bomb here (bit of a running joke with the students in the town counting them) and each time the main street was closed off and cleared and not once did folk begrudge it being done. (Though they despised the idiots making the call).

Small price to pay rather than the chance (even if unlikely) of people getting killed and maimed. Not often I have a strong view on anything really but the attitude disgusts me. Call me bull headed but I would have left and made myself bloody loud in doing so and fought tooth and nail over the principle of it on the lost day. (As we did before in my school days to attend the rememberance service). I hope the press do pick it up or at least the backlash/HR fiasco it creates rattles some cages.

Happy it amounted to nothing at least.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

I\'m definately not a big fan of lawsuits but this case is one where I think whoever made that decision needs a good ol smack down.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by lizcam
Glad to hear you are Ok Liz and that this was just a hoax.

Been on the receiving end of several threat evacuations while working in the Civil Service in both Newcastle & Blackpool.
In themselves evacuation procedures are never a good thing but they should always lead to a review of policies to cover faults found in the processes.

However the moron who made the decision NOT to evacuate needs to be made severeley(*) aware of the consequences of their failure to abide by Corporate policies. (* Strong A** Kicking)
As to the \"Unauthorised Absence\" and pay deduction that\'s just plain F******g stupid.


As regards your point about:
\"Normal policy in this case would be to empty the building into the parking lot and have the police sweep the building for anything that might be a bomb\".
There is a train of thought over here in the UK (and being actively considered and reviewed by my employer) that a parking lot is in fact the worst place to congregate in the event of an explosion or fire:-
1) Consider how close to the building is your parking lot and then think about the potential debris shower from an Explosion.
2) Cars run on Petrol and thats rather easy to set on fire.

Guess from that, you can tell I\'m the Fire Warden for my area at work.

 

[DaN]

Tbh, I would\'ve thought that any serious terrorist would know where a company (Or service, etc) would have their evacuation site and have a secondary device planted there, but then they probably wouldn\'t have given a warning if that was the case.

Threats of any kind are taken VERY seriously in our current fearful climate, and any idiot who even jokingly makes threats of violence or carrying weapons etc deserves whatever punishment they get.

I\'m sorry to anyone who has had to work under threat of violence, either through coincidence or as a regular hazard of the job - as for corporate or governmental procedures they\'re all different, but I would ALWAYS say life is more important than property, possessions etc

Any company or branch of government that risks it\'s employees by neglecting that fact is guilty of serious misconduct and in the event of any such incident should be liable to suffer from very serious legal action.