I blame Lynne Truss

The Eats, Shoots and Leaves woman has a lot to answer for. I mean, she has to take some responsibility for encouraging my pedantic nature - making me the kind of person who stops in front of a sign like this and says, "Hah. I think they mean alternative. After all, alternate would mean you could use every other exit."

Yeah, I know. Sad, isn't it.

But then my colleague pointed out that we were four floors down in a multi-storey car park.

What exactly were the alternative exits to the stairs and lifts? After 1) dodging the cars to walk up the ramps, 2) crawling through the ventilation ducts like Bruce Willis, or 3) teleportation, we were a bit stumped, frankly.