My teenage son's summer job has been testing fire alarms for a local security-and-alarm company. fire-alarm

Fire alarms in businesses and schools must be tested each year to comply with local fire codes.  Of course, summer is the only time that school fire alarms can be tested, so he's been getting the grand tour of many area school districts.  He comes home each day with interesting stories to tell, about the ingenius ways these alarms (often located on high ceilings) are cleaned and tested.  The individual alarms are tested as well as the system as a whole.  Any detectors and alarms that need repair are listed so that a technician can replace them.

Before they can turn on a whole building's system of fire alarms, everyone in the building needs to be notified of the test, so there is no panic.  Being a typical teenager, my son regrets that his employer is very careful to observe that rule.

Yesterday, my son told me about a service call that one of the technicians received last winter.  It was Christmas Eve, and they complained that their alarm, near the Christmas tree, was beeping.  They wanted it fixed immediately, regardless of the overtime cost.  The technician discovered that the alarm was not malfunctioning at all; it wasn't even making any noise.  The noise was coming from a contractor's beeper that had fallen into the Christmas tree.

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