Kindergarten days 13

Heh. Reminds me of that one time in the early 2000s when I was in an internet café that caught on fire.

They were running a modified version of Windows on their PCs, that would only let you use the computer for the time you had paid for, had some special interfaces, and locked you out from accessing the PC's regular desktop (not without workarounds at least, which were easy enough for me to find).

But they frequently would have their main server crash, or require being rebooted, which would result in all their ~100 PCs shutting down simultaneously, and me losing all my work. Not just that, but I'd often need to wait, outside (regardless of rain or cold), for anywhere between half to two hours before they got it fixed.  

So I had already learned to dread any and all announcements made over the PA speaker system.

---

"♫ DING DONG! ♫"

"Oh no... no... nonononono...!"

"Hello. We would like to ask all our customers to please leave the building---"

"Oh no. Please no, please no, not a server crash - anything but a server crash!"

"--because there's a fire in our basement."

"..."

"...Oh thank GOD, I thought it was a server crash. Phew!"

"..."
"wait, what?"
"...Don't be ridiculous, this place is basically the Internet, the Internet can't be on fire."

---

Then I calmly saved my work, packed my things, and went to McDonalds.

When I came back after my lunch break, the fire brigade was leaving, the fire was extinguished, and they didn't even restart the computers, so all my work was still there.



I probably should have reacted differently, but it just sounded so ridiculous at the time, like saying "Oh no! My dog ate my Youtube videos and a bear is stealing my twitter!"