Fire drill

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, firmwide policies compendiously documented, or 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, one that is large enough to make the whimper all but inevitable, but not large enough to safely ignore the risk of a bang from the get-go. You have to go through the motions.

2. Office ennui: The Friday afternoon clarion call over the Tannoys: it declares all is well with the world — even the building’s fire alarms are working — and it is time to start the slow stampede for the exits. It is, of course, usually followed by a fire drill in the first sense above, meaning that your weekend is wrecked, almnost certainly on account of a damp squib, after all.