This story falls in to the 'It's pretty funny, but I'm glad it didn't happen to me' category.
Last night I went out to happy hour in honor on one of Michael's co-workers who is leaving the company. It was a pretty normal event until we ordered some appetizers.
We were all gathered around a small pub table. When our food arrived, we needed to make room on the table. All of the jackets and purses in the table area were just shoved out of the way. As the guacamole was being passed, we suddenly heard "your purse is in fire!"
Sure enough, we look over and there are flames jumping out of the soon-to-be-ex-co-worker's purse. She kinds of blows on the flames and the girls at the next table go in to panic mode. The flames are pretty quickly extinguished, but there is some pretty bad smelling smoke. One of the girls at the next table just kept yelling 'get it out of here', 'get it out of here'. When no one would hand her the smoking bag, she heroically yelled 'give it to me, I'll take it out'. There was just no reason for the bag to leave the bar. She was just crazy.
The bar tenders opened the front door and the smoke cleared out quickly. The purse had about a 4" hole burned through it and it was falling apart around the burned edges. There was also some damage to her wallet inside. Something for her Christmas list.
Root cause: a crack team of investigators quickly found a small votive candle that was the source of the flame. The offending candle was promptly removed from the scene of the crime, possibly for further testing.
