How I Got Trapped in the Mall
Dear friends,
Today I was going to write about rain, why I sometimes choose to ride my bike in the rain and why I don’t, along with my strategies for staying dry and not miserable. However, today I got trapped in the mall and I thought you would rather hear about that.
So, it was raining today and I decided that I wanted to be a lazy bum and take the bus (again)*. It was not only raining, but cold, so I decided to try to take the +15s to work. In my city, many of the downtown buildings are connected by hamster tubes that run across the street a story up. Not all of the buildings are connected to each other, so in order to get anywhere you generally have to do a bit of meandering and it’s pretty easy to get lost or turned around.
So I went up to the second floor of the mall that’s a block or two away from where I work, and things were going fine until I saw that the store I needed to cut through was not open yet (it being before 8 a.m.). However, beside the entrance to the closed store was a plain door with an ordinary, red “EXIT” sign above it. I decided to try that, because I didn’t want to have to backtrack. The door opened into a long narrow hallway with another door at the end. I proceeded down this rather sketchy hallway, went through the door and found myself in another tiny hallway. There was an emergency exit, another door, and the door I came through. The emergency exit said all over it that the alarm would ring if you open that door, so I decided to go for door #2. It was locked. Admitting defeat, I turned around to go back the way I came, but that door was locked.
I tried both doors a few times and thought about going through the emergency exit, but the vision of causing a fire alarm and forcing numerous people out into the rain for no reason made me pause. I thought about calling my coworker and seeing if she could come rescue me, but decided against this because I didn’t know if the first door would lock behind her, and I didn’t want her to get trapped as well. So I called the operator and asked for the mall security. The lady I spoke to was having trouble finding the number I needed, and I explained my situation to her, partly because of the ridiculousness of it, but also because I wanted her to understand that this was a nontrivial matter. She eventually transferred me to someone else, who found the number I needed. I called security and told them where I was, and the gentleman I talked to told me to go head through the emergency exit, it would only cause an alarm to go off in the security office and not the whole building. So that’s what I did (and discovered a surprisingly nice staircase, especially considering the condition of the hallways I had just travelled).
And that is the story of how I got trapped in the mall.
*I’d better go to Chestemere this weekend or my week’s kms will be very sad.
Today I was going to write about rain, why I sometimes choose to ride my bike in the rain and why I don’t, along with my strategies for staying dry and not miserable. However, today I got trapped in the mall and I thought you would rather hear about that.
So, it was raining today and I decided that I wanted to be a lazy bum and take the bus (again)*. It was not only raining, but cold, so I decided to try to take the +15s to work. In my city, many of the downtown buildings are connected by hamster tubes that run across the street a story up. Not all of the buildings are connected to each other, so in order to get anywhere you generally have to do a bit of meandering and it’s pretty easy to get lost or turned around.
So I went up to the second floor of the mall that’s a block or two away from where I work, and things were going fine until I saw that the store I needed to cut through was not open yet (it being before 8 a.m.). However, beside the entrance to the closed store was a plain door with an ordinary, red “EXIT” sign above it. I decided to try that, because I didn’t want to have to backtrack. The door opened into a long narrow hallway with another door at the end. I proceeded down this rather sketchy hallway, went through the door and found myself in another tiny hallway. There was an emergency exit, another door, and the door I came through. The emergency exit said all over it that the alarm would ring if you open that door, so I decided to go for door #2. It was locked. Admitting defeat, I turned around to go back the way I came, but that door was locked.
I tried both doors a few times and thought about going through the emergency exit, but the vision of causing a fire alarm and forcing numerous people out into the rain for no reason made me pause. I thought about calling my coworker and seeing if she could come rescue me, but decided against this because I didn’t know if the first door would lock behind her, and I didn’t want her to get trapped as well. So I called the operator and asked for the mall security. The lady I spoke to was having trouble finding the number I needed, and I explained my situation to her, partly because of the ridiculousness of it, but also because I wanted her to understand that this was a nontrivial matter. She eventually transferred me to someone else, who found the number I needed. I called security and told them where I was, and the gentleman I talked to told me to go head through the emergency exit, it would only cause an alarm to go off in the security office and not the whole building. So that’s what I did (and discovered a surprisingly nice staircase, especially considering the condition of the hallways I had just travelled).
And that is the story of how I got trapped in the mall.
*I’d better go to Chestemere this weekend or my week’s kms will be very sad.