Shortly thereafter, I hosted an event in our section of the building on a Saturday. I arrived early, unlocked the door, punched in my code ("beep beep beep beep") and was in ("disarmed, ready to arm"). No problem. The next time I saw the building manager she congratulated me on a successful entry, but admitted her surprise at my success. Really? How hard is it? Punch in the code, turn on the alarm. Punch in the code and set it to away, exit the building. In the few weeks that followed I became quite competent in using the alarm, successfully letting myself in and out of the building as needed (minus the one time I locked my keys inside).
The alarm for the rest of the building is just like the one for our program office, except it requires a different code. Based on my success using our alarm, I didn't bat an eye when I was asked to host a meeting in the board room on a Saturday. I got the necessary code and arrived early to the building to allow time to disarm the entire alarm and prepare our meeting space.
I first opened the door to our office, punched in the code ("beep beep beep beep") and was in ("disarmed, ready to arm"). With a bit of a nervous feeling I used my outside door key to the rest of the building and punched in my code. Silence. Uh oh. No recognition of my code, no announcement that the alarm was disarmed, but a definite recognition of me in the building meaning that I had exactly 1 minute to disarm before it would notify the alarm company and they would send out a police officer. I punched in my code...silence. I remembered that if the alarm was tripped, the security company would call the main phone line to see if an employee answered who could give an assurance (a code) that the alarm was false before dispatching the cops. Unfortunately, the telephone that would ring was in another section of the building in another security zone. For me to get there would require setting off another alarm.
I remembered that another option was to call the security company within the allotted time and tell them what happened. Luckily I got through, assured them that I was supposed to have access to the building, and the operator overwrote the alarm for the door I had entered. Having bought some time, she said that if I would walk back around to the keypad she would walk me through. When I walked outside from my office to the other entrance, I saw the group of women I was hosting waiting outside the gate. However, my priority was definitely to get the building disarmed so that we could use the boardroom for the meeting. I expected to quickly resolve the alarm issue so that I could get let them in. However, nothing worked. I tried various codes and various ways of entering them. Nothing. The system operator asked if I wanted her to disarm the door for the day, but that would be no help since the board room is in another alarm zone so I told her to go ahead and arm it. I finally thanked the woman for her time, hung up, and went to meet the group. As I opened the gate and they walked through my cell phone rang. It was my boss calling to see if I was at the building because one of the ladies I was meeting called her when the gate wasn't open. I'm pretty sure they were early.
I explained to them the whole situation and it was decided that we would meet in our much smaller office space since that was the part of the building that I had disarmed. It was a tight fit but it worked.
Mid meeting there was a knock at the inside door. It was another staff member (young, cute single guy) letting me know he was in the building too. I stupidly told him that I set off the alarm. Bimbo points for me.
After the meeting I decided that I would let him know that I was leaving and that way I could be sure that he would arm the alarm (since he had successfully entered the building). I wasn't sure what part of the building he was in and I didn't want to take a chance wandering around into an armed section of the building so I tried calling his extension. I thought the phones there were the same as in my regular office, but not quite. The phone didn't ring on the other end, and sometimes the front desk will just page us through the phone so I decided to try that route. I hung up and pressed "page" and the other 2 phones in the office started beeping. I realized that I was paging the entire building, so I hung up. After hanging up on him twice I pressed page, announced that I was leaving and hoped that he would call me back so that we could figure out the alarm. Recognizing that I was a dunce at the phone system in addition to the alarm, he came and knocked on the door and assured me he would take care of it. Whew!
A few days later I saw the building manager who had been surprised at my initial success. First words from her mouth? "Do you want to tell me about it?" I retold the sequence of events, and she told me that there's a special way to clear off the alarm panel once someone sets it off, and I didn't do that so the group that was meeting later that night was not able to arm the system that night. And they got locked in the gate. Way to go, me.
"Bimbo points"... haha. Love it.
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