Message #1178

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At my previous job with a television station, the receptionist sat out in the lobby by herself.  All employees had to have a passcard to "beep" in behind the glass doors (leaving her in the lobby unprotected).  She had 3 buttons on her desk.  One was to "beep" visitors through or employees when they forgot their passcard.  The 2nd button automatically locked the front doors in case she saw a crazy person with a gun coming up the steps or out in the parking lot.  The third button was the panic button, it rang in the back in Master Control. They would immediately call her and ask her questions about what was wrong.  If something was wrong, the police were summoned and the largest of our guys would immediately come to the front lobby.  Most of the time when the buzzer went off it was because her chair inadvertently got pushed up against the button.  Also we had a camera in the bushes behind her that fed video back into the master control room so they could see what was going on out there in the lobby. I only had to use the automatic lock button once when I was relieving the receptionist.  One of the other television stations had called us and tipped us off that a "crazy person" was coming our way and to be on the lookout They even faxed us a digital picture of him.  Sure enough, he pulled up in the parking lot and was coming up the steps when he was met by some big guys coming out of our building.  Within several minutes, the police arrived and took control of the situation.  And yes, our cameramen were out there shooting video too. It was scary and my heart was racing!