The other day, my shift started 12 midnight. Not too many people were calling. It was 5 minutes into the shift when I started to smell a burning odor. It smelled like burnt electronics so the first place I looked was the back of my computer, there was nothing there. I looked under my desk, everything looked fine. But I couldn't just ignore a burning odor like that so I stood up from my seat and called out to my supervisor and told her I smelled something burning. In a few minutes it wasn't just me anymore. The entire floor began noticing it. Some were already taking calls. Then smoke began filling the building. There was no fire in sight though.
I was waiting for my boss to tell us what to do but when I looked she was on her way out the door. So much for leadership. I told the rest of my team to just logout and get out of the building. The other teams were still waiting for instructions from the manager, who by the way wouldn't be in until 3am. It seems Teletech doesn't have an SOP for fire emergencies. Anyway me and my team were on our way out the door when the rest of the floor finally decided they didn't want to die and started leaving as well. Most of us even brought out our headsets. We'd have to pay for it if got wet, geez. I also noticed there was no fire alarm or sprinklers that came on. Teletech was apparently more concerned about their computers getting wet than the safety of the building and its employees. Everyone was finally out. We work on the first floor but we noticed the people from the second floor were not going out. We stayed outside for about an hour when the guard finally came out and told us there was no fire, just some electronic equipment got burnt. We were told to go upstairs and stay at the training rooms and await further instructions.
The Team Leads were useless. The manager finally arrived around 2am and told us we could go back to work ow and that the building is safe. When we entered we could still smell the burnt odor coupled with a strong annoying scent of air freshner. I think I became unconcious (maybe I just fell asleep) after a few minutes of breathing the toxic air. After the shift I was too tired to try to look for the source of the fire. I wish my company had a better policy with emergency situations. I mean, what if there was a real fire, or what if an earthquake hits us? Tsk tsk...
