"does it smell like burnt toast?"

so we had our third fire alarm go off today. i was fortunately not around for the first two but as i sat here reading jonathan stock's analysis of the advantages of the recent rise in biographies in the field of ethnomusicology, the blasted alarm went off. everyone's natural reaction was to poke their respective heads out the door and see who's in and go back into their rooms to collect valuables. a full three minutes later, everyone had come back out and started casually making their way down the stairs, knowing full well that there wasn't a real fire. but at the second floor (really the third floor), people started rushing a little bit and us at the back of the line were wondering what's going on. suddenly everybody was asking everybody else if it smelled like burnt toast. and yea, it sure did.
it's disconcerting that there are people burning enough toast to set the fire alarm off. it's also disconcerting that there are people who smell burnt toast and assume there's a massive fire raging and start running.
so... that's all. we waited outside while i quietly hoped that the burnt toast started a fire so huge that my copy of jonathan stock's analysis was slowly burning to its ash version but here i am and it's still right in front of me.
shame.