“Your attention please! A ‘Controlled Burn’ is being conducted in the Nichols Arboretum. Repeating, a ‘Controlled Burn’ is being conducted in the Arboretum. Thank you.”
Smelling smoke at work is generally not a good thing. Especially someplace where they have large cannisters of oxygen. It’s nice that they decided to explain that the reason we’re smelling smoke is that they’re burning down part of the forest next door.
In a very safe way, of course.
Somehow, I can still picture the patients here who are on a smoking cessation program all gathered around one of the HVAC vents all saying “Oh YEAH, baby!” and sniffing away.
There’s something cool about a forestry job. I can’t think of anything else where every so often you just burn down all of the clutter that’s in your way. Can you imagine applying that to computer networking? One day you decide that you’ve got too many old 10-base-T lines snaking around, so you get out your Zippo and make an announcement…
“Your attention please! A ‘Controlled Burn’ is being conducted in the Server Closet. Repeating, a ‘Controlled Burn’ is being conducted in the Server Closet. Thank you.”
Actually, now that I think about it, there are other companies that have tried similar methods of clearing clutter… Arthur Anderson’s experiments in industrial confetti production for example.