City Of Seattle: Popcorn injustice

When we hear that a memo needs approval from the mayor's office, it's the stuff of serious consideration. So imagine our surprise when we heard that hizzoner's office had to deal with the public scourge of burned microwave popcorn at Civic Center buildings. Not because the stuff is stinky or unhealthy, but, well, here's part of the June 9 memo:

"This is a serious issue which requires Fire Department emergency response. ... In May, we had the most recent building evacuation at the Justice Center due to burnt microwave popcorn. This is the eighth time in less than three years that we had to evacuate 400+ persons from Justice Center due to burnt popcorn." It continued that if the problem persists, microwave popcorn will be banned in city buildings, and advises persistent poppers to "listen to the pop, to know when to stop."

We won't give Greg Nickels' office guff for trying to cut back on building evacuations. But, on behalf of all those who have at some point or the other, burned a bag of microwave popcorn without setting off a fire alarm, we have to ask: How old are the microwaves in city buildings? Don't they have pre-set popcorn timers? Or is it just that the folks who work there can't figure it out?

If it's longer breaks city employees are aiming for, then we can teach them a trick we learned in high school that temporarily backs up all the sinks in the building at the same time. No smoke alarms involved. But then, that might trigger a hand-washing memo, which could be followed by City Council proposals, long periods of public comment, ordinances and perhaps a referendum of some sort.