Dutch Fire Drill

So I've been in Holland for about 2 and a half months now, and luckilly the company I work for has paid for some Berlitz courses in Dutch for me and the 8 other trainees. This company also has two offices, one in Amsterdam, and the one I work at, in Heerlen, which is on the complete opposite side of The Netherlands.

My Dutch is up to the level that I could undestand this pop-up message that got sent to every computer terminal yesterday afternoon. It basically stated that the Amsterdam office was on fire, and that we should all wait for further informtion, and if you happened to be in Amsterdam, you should get out of the building immediatly.

Thirty minutes later, another message came, and it said that there was in fact no fire at the Amsterdam office, and that this was a "company wide" fire drill. It then got more bizzare when my boss announced that as part of the fire drill, they were going to simulate what would happen if the Amsterdam office actually was inaccessable. That ment that most of the staff from the Amsterdam office were going to travel accross the country to the Heerlen office, and see if they could carry out the remaining 3 hours of their workday successfully over here. I don't know about you, but if I was working at the Amsterdam office, and I just found out that I have to spend about 6 extra hours today in a train, I would be pissed.

Thankfully, I got to go home before all the grumpy Amsterdam people arrived at our office to take over our computers and see if they could still work on the other side of the country.

On the bright side, this company has an open bar at the office on the first monday of the month.