|
I had been at my new job on the outpatient adolescent psych unit for about 3 weeks when I did my first cooking group with the kids. They each made their own batch of soft pretzel dough and got to shape their own pretzels however they wanted. I had about 4 cookie sheets and 8 kids so I as I took one set out of the oven, I put a new set on the same cookie sheet and put it back in the oven. As I was taking out one of the last batches, the fire alarms go off in the hospital. Code Red, 3A, Code Red, 3A. Well, 3 A was my area! I start moving the kids out to evacuate and maintenance guys from all over the hospital show up with fire extinguishers and tell me that the fire is in my OT room! I looked at the cookie sheet I had just pulled out of the oven and there was a small piece of batter that had obviously been cooked twice. The smoke alarm was directly over the stove in my room so that one little piece of burned pretzel dough set off the alarm!
I showed them the "fire" and within seconds, the city fire department was rushing into my OT room. I offered them pretzels...
I figured I'd better go tell my supervisor about all this once the firemen were convinced there was no fire. She was in the cafeteria with a group of social workers and RTs and I walked up to her and greeted her. She asked me how it was going and I said "I did my first cooking group today." She said "Great! How did it go?" I said "You heard that Code Red?". The whole table busted out laughing. Then they told me a story about a Rec Therapist who sprayed air freshener all over the hallway after an exercise group and set off the fire alarm on the inpatient that way!
They never let me live down the pretzel thing, but they did relocate my smoke alarm to the other end of the room!
Dee
|