My dorm building in college had exit doors that were undersized for the fire codes. They fixed this by moving the exit/entrance door to one side of the hallway, and adding an emergency exit door on the other side. The emergency exit door had a single red sticker on the push bar that said “Emergency exit - Alarm will sound”, and it really would. It happened at least 75 times in the first month after everyone moving in.

They fixed this by sending everyone 75 angry emails about it. The same thing happened the next year, and also every year since then. I heard (but could never confirm) that putting double doors for the entry/exit doors would have cost a total of $3,000 more, for the multiple exits.

I’ve had to use these before, when I lived in a dormitory that had frequent false fire alarms. The fire exit stairs took us to a series of one-way locking doors, ending with a “Do not exit, alarm will sound” door. At that point, even if we felt like it might be a false alarm, we had no choice but to go through the door. The first several times, it set off a weak alarm, but did not appear to be wired into anything else in the building. After a few times, it stopped going off, I assume because its battery died. It’s nobody’s job to replace those batteries, so they stay dead.

Theyre usually a silent alarm that becomes a real alarm later