EMAIL FROM EMPLOYEE:

Cindy: I guess I will need to come up with a Plan B since the FLU CLINIC for the WORLD will now be located at Employee Health. Obviously, our plan to limit patient contact in elevators & lobby by detouring through Employee Health to access the stairwell will no longer make sense for us. It would be like walking onto a giant Petri dish of Influenza.

In lieu of access to an exterior door to the stairwell, I am going to go search for a link, passage, tunnel, drain pipe, hole or crack that will allow us an alternate route into our office. Think I’ll start by walking over the train tracks and talking to the crane operator over at the nearby construction sight. Maybe we could be crane lifted up into our office or hey the Pegasus rescue helicopter crew across the road could chopper us in. The new parking-garage-that-we-can’t- park-in is only two feet the window — we could put a plank across the gap and shimmy over…..is that dynamite I see over there in the empty lot next door? Must be for the new Nuclear Power Plant. Maybe there will be a nuclear waste drainage tunnel that we could access……. the possibilities are endless!

MY RESPONSE:

There’s another stairwell on the other end of the building, Drama Queen!

EMPLOYEE REPLY TWO HOURS LATER:

You’d THINK this would be a simple solution. My friends, think again.

I have just returned from an expedition to the “other stairwell”. I encountered no difficulties in entering the outer stairwell door on the western side of the building [other than having to push through a crowd of people talking about “evacuating the building” because of the toxic smoke that was permeating the air outside]. I proceeded quickly up the stairs to the 4th floor. As I approached the landing, a large red sign read “Caution: Construction Sight”. I thought nothing of the sign, thinking “oh, probably just a wall collapsed or something”, so I opened the stairwell door leading into the hallway. It was then that I saw yellow crime scene tape everywhere and an even bigger sign that read:
CHEMICAL SPILL.  I’m meeting with crane operator man at 3:30 for cappuccinos. I’ll let you know what he says.