I Have To Comment On The Lobster Dinner Haz-Mat Response In Southampton
Yesterday I got a call from my friend Gerren who works as a physical therapist at Manual & Sports Physical Therapy in Southampton, which was filled with emergency workers, police officers and a Haz-Mat team.
The police were called because a cooking pot had appeared on the steps of his office, and the office manager there noticed it in the morning, and didn’t know who put it there. To play it safe she called police and reported a suspicious package, which basically means there was concern that the pot was some kind of bomb.
I was down there, and had a pretty clear view of the pot, which ended up being just that, a pot, filled with somebody’s lobster dinner and an empty bottle of champagne.
There was absolutely ZERO doubt in my mind, that it was just a cooking pot, and the whole scene seemed stupid to me. Here were all of these grown men and women, staring in confusion at a cooking pot. Emergency lights were flashing, police had taped off the area, it was ridiculous. I just can’t imagine anybody that was standing there actually believing that somebody decided to plant a bomb disguised as a cooking pot at Waldbaum‘s. But apparently, this is the world we live in today.
I expressed it to the group that was standing there, “Are you serious? Why doesn’t somebody just open it and look inside? It’s a cooking pot, this isn’t a war zone out here. You know this is what’s wrong with things today. And now I have to go back to my desk and write about this and report on it. it’s just ridiculous, there is absolutely nothing here but a show.”
“You can’t be too careful,” somebody said as I left a little irritated.
You can be too careful. You can absolutely be too careful, because if you’re too careful, then freaking all of Southampton‘s emergency officials respond to an abandoned cooking pot in a parking lot.
I also can’t believe that nobody opened the pot and had a look inside of it before police were called. I mean, seriously, if it was a purse, would that be suspicious? How about a bottle of soda that was discarded on the steps, would that have been cause for alarm. What about a backpack? Would you have been too afraid to open that? Seriously? Would that seriously frighten you enough to call the police?
IT WAS A FREAKING COOKING POT. I mean come on.
I swear man, pretty soon we’re going to have to be frisked before we can walk into a grocery store because you just never know, somebody might be out to get ya!
I’m all in favor of security, but this was absolutely ridiculous and everybody there knew it, buwether all played along. I can’t believe that common sense thinking is so far gone today. It’s nuts.