How employees can cost their employers dearly.
Like any apartment building of any size, the floors of our building are divided and isolated by automatic closing fire doors, which help limit fire spread AND protect routes of egress for tenants. Well over the past few days the fire door closest to our apartment has been getting blocked open. Each time I would remove the rock propping the door open and it would get replaced. Being a former firefighter I know how important it is for my own life safety that these doors remain closed at all times. I also knew it was a violation of law to block or disable fire doors such that they could not close properly.
Well I finally had enough and put a sign on the door that it was not to be blocked open. Then this morning I heard my sign being torn down and caught the individual who was blocking the door open. I tried to explain that it was against the law to block or disable the door and she claimed that our landlord told her to do this and that if I had issues with it I had to take it up with him. I told her it didn't matter what the landlord had told her because what she was doing was against the law and I was not going to jeopardize my life safety or the safety of my possessions by allowing this door to remain open.
She said there was nothing I could do be cause she worked for the landlord and these were her instruction and that I had to take it up with him. She proceeded to block the door open, when she left I removed the stone and she would replace it a short while later. Having had enough of this I called and left a message on my landlord's pager service about the issue. All the while she would place stones, I would remove them and she would go get another one. Eventually she gave up on the stones and screwed a wooden plate into the floor to hold the door open making it a flagrant fire code violation. Again she left and I took digital photos of the door being disabled then removed the wooden block. A short while later she returned and knocking on my door demanding that I give the block of wood back to her, which I refused to answer my door.
Eventually she returned again with her screw gun and started messing with the door again. I went out and told her that if she did not leave the door alone I would call the police, which she told me to do. Calling the police they put me in touch with my local fire station and explained the situation to them with this employee standing in front of me. They confirmed that it was a fire code violation to disable fire doors and said she was not to mess with the door. When I explained what she had been doing, they told me they would be over to our building in about an hour. When they arrived they confirmed that the disabled doors on my floor were a violation and preceded to go through the rest of the building and our sister building looking for other violations.
At first they were going to simply write up a warning to the landlord explaining that these things had to be fixed, but then the employee showed back up and said that she had been told to prop the doors open by the landlord (which I'm not convinced of). They told her it didn't matter and that she was just as culpable for violating the law as was the landlord even if he told her to do it. She then started arguing with them that she was only doing what she was told and that the landlord does the exact same thing in his other 16 buildings. Having had enough of the matter the Fire Lt. decided he wanted to speak to the landlord right then and there and that citations were going to be issued instead of just warnings.
Making matters worse, in the process of fighting with me about whether the door was going to remain open or closed she had removed the automatic door closer from the door. When asked about this, she lied to the firefighters and said it wasn't there to begin with. What she didn't know and still doesn't know is that I had pictures of the door taken not an hour before showing how the door was screwed open AND clearly showing the automatic door closer on the door, which I proceeded to show to the fire department.
There you have it, simple pettiness by an employee, her insisting on disabling a fire door, mouthing off to firefighters and lying about her removing the automatic door closing mechanism turned a simple issue of letting a door close properly until issue could be clarified with the landlord during the work week into written warnings by the fire department. Continued mouthing off by the employee eventually turned warnings into citations and fines for multiple fire code violations in multiple buildings with the prospect of more inspections coming for yet other buildings.
The thing was, this lady knew I was a former firefighter and admitted to me that she knew what the law was in regards to disabling fire doors, yet she let her pettiness get the best of her and by refusing to simply leave the fire doors on my floor alone has created a big headache, maintenance expense and fines for her employer. Don't you love employees like this.
Those who wonder what the importance is of fussing about fire doors are, should keep in mind that all fire codes are written with the blood of those who died in earlier fires. Fire codes are not idle bureaucracy run a muck. Of all the laws on the books, fire codes are the most important to your personal safety. Screwing with a fire safety device or ignoring a fire safety code could cost you or someone else their life.
