Fire drill

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Fire drill (n.)

1. Management: That unexpected black swan event that is certain to bugger up your weekend. It will start with clear and present danger (albeit apprehended through the foggy beer goggles of war, confusion and miscommunication from panicked people in ops); it will gradually suck in more and more people across the organisation (legal, litigation, compliance, senior relationship management) to a point where:

• Bang scenario: It becomes so large that the combined mass of important people creates a Schwarzschild radius and it collapses in on itself;
• Whimper scenario: It becomes so dispersed, and entropy so great, that it fizzles out towards some kind of boredom heat death as it becomes clear that neither the legal terms so patiently negotiated, the firmwide policies so compendiously documented or the common-sense so parsimoniously rationed, has any real prospect of overriding the dictates of keeping the client happy.

As in many aspects of life, whimpers outnumber bangs by a distressing proportion — that is, a proportion large enough to make the whimper all but inevitable, but not quite large enough to safely ignore the risk of it being a bang from the get-go. So you have to go through the motions. Hence, fire drills are a regular part of commercial life.

2. Office ennui: Actual fire drills: the Friday afternoon clarion call over the Tannoys that declares all is well with the world — even the building’s fire alarms are working — and it is time for yon wildebeest to start their slow stampede for the exits.

This kind of fire drill is, of course, usually followed by a fire drill in the first sense, meaning that despite all indications to the contrary your weekend is wrecked after all, and almost certainly on account of a damp squib.

Eheu.

See also

• Twenty-three ninteen