The fire alarms are completely devalued in our place already. The weekly test happens at 4.45pm on a Wednesday and involves short and long blasts of the siren going off randomly over the course of up to ten minutes. Then there's the fact that the damn thing randomly goes off for a short blast every now and then, followed five minutes later by an apology informing us it was a false alarm.

And I know it needs to be loud and catch attention, but the constant ringing bell we had at school was fine for that. This is overly piercing and loud. It is painful on the ears, not just attention grabbing and loud.