Thursday, September 14, 2006

Code Red at Register 10

If you're ever in a Wal-Mart, and you hear the phrase "CODE RED" at location XXXX and you're not faint of heart, head that way for some good spectacle.

CODE RED is for a fire. And we had us a genuine CODE RED on Sunday morning.

The girl on register 10 was going ganbusters and there were people everywhere - as it always is on Sunday mornings at a Wal-Mart. She's scanning and sacking when the old lady who is just starting to put her stuff on the belt starts screaming.

"YOUR REGISTER IS ON FIRE. YOUR REGISTER IS ON FIRE."

The place got deathly still and everyone wanted a good gawk. I wanted to see flames coming off the keyboard or something. The girl trying to beat out a stubborn blaze with her blue Wal-Mart smock or something. Nothing so dramatic.

It wasn't even the register. It was her check machine and printer. Apparently, from what we can figure out, it had gotten really dirty and then a piece of paper had jammed up in there. Some little wheel started grinding and it had gotten really hot and was smoking a little bit.

No flames. No fire. No fire extinguiser. No hot firefighters. Just a little smoke. Someone changed the printer out and the girl kept on ringing. The old woman kicked up a fuss and she had to wait maybe five minutes.

It was still kind of funny though.

Here's other good information.

CODE WHITE is an injury.
CODE ADAM is a lost child
CODE ORANGE is chemical spill
There are other codes for a shooting/firearm, a hostage and severe weather. If you hear BLACK, GREEN or BLUE, it might be a good plan to run the other way. I forget the exact order. I think BLACK is shooting, GREEN is hostage and BLUE is severe weather.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmmm, Next time I see a phone in one of the service departments that is in reach I think I'm going to press page or intercom and scream code green for hostage and say "Code green in the meat freezer." j/k :)

Anonymous said...

In the old unix printer drivers, the system will return "Error: Printer on Fire" for any unknown printer error. The story I heard about the origin of the error is that there was a printer where the paper drum would become misaligned and grind paper dust into the printer, which would eventually catch fire.

Lindsay said...

Is it true that if there is a Code Adam that an employee has to stand at every exit and no one can leave????
But Dang.... no HOT firefighters.. BUMMER!

Anonymous said...

haha. i remember that the next time i'm i'm in wallmart. (it'll be a while tho. i'm all about supporting the local businesses.)

Anonymous said...

I heard there was also a Code Purple, to denote when the media showed up. As a newsman, I find it funny, but don't know if it's true. This a store-by-store thing or what?

Anonymous said...

actually code black is severe weather so I thik code blue is shooting. Never heard of code purple. When I worked at WM I had to learn them all but when I transferred to sam's club I found that code green wasn't on the list so I suppose code purple could exist somewhere

Anonymous said...

Code Black is weather, code green is hostage, code brown is shooting/violence (hmmm *smirk*), and code blue is a bomb.

I know because my fellow photo-center asociate 4 years experience my senior, called a code blue instead of a code white my first month on the job when this old diabetic lady collapsed after spending an hour and a half on one of the kiosks. Yeah, that was a fun day.