Night shifts are where it all goes down...
Thanks to all the folks on Quora who shared their stories.
A Bank At Night Is No Place For Children, by Abdul Quadir Saifee
I used to work as PC support in those days and was working for a Bank. One of the tasks in the night shift was to image new desktops with the company image (to install a new Operating system).
It was around 2 AM and I was alone on the whole floor, engrossed in installing the OS. Suddenly I heard a kid running and laughing. I got shit scared. I thought I might have just imagined it.
After around 5 minutes, I heard two kids running and laughing and now I was sure its what I heard. Two kids, running and laughing, on an empty floor, in the dead of night. I was spooked really bad.
I decided to follow the sound.
Then, I saw one cubicle light was on and a guy was sitting there.
They were his kids, around 5-6 year old, who were playing. He told me that he had some unfinished work and thought to tag along his kids, till he finishes it up.
I wanted to shake him up badly and shout that he almost gave me a heart attack, but in the end just said "cute kids".
Continue to the next page for more night shift stories!
Night Patrol, by Robert Sim
Being a military camp guard as part of a small detachment, I was frequently assigned to do night patrols around the camp perimeter. For one of the patrols, I was walking along with a partner, wanting to complete the round before I turned in for the night.
Walking past a building, we suddenly heard footsteps coming out from the building. We paused and checked our watches, 2am odd in the morning. We decided to walk around the building, checking every exit. As it was a secured building that stores millions of dollars worth of equipment. Each exit was armed with an intrusion detection lock. Each lock was armed.
We heard more footsteps, and decided to radio back to the guardhouse, "Is there any night ops going on?"
"No. Everyone in camp had checked out." (The guardhouse holds the keys to important keypresses. When these keys are turned in, no one except for the essential staff, i.e. camp guards and other personnel on duty are in camp)
"There's footsteps in building X. All locks are red (locked and armed). Advice?"
"Er. Continue your patrol. Will check in with duty orderly spec."
"Roger."
The DOS checked the building out soon after, and there wasn't anyone around.
Continue to the next page for another scary night shift story!
Probably not what you are looking for, but this is the scariest thing that happened to me while I was night shift "security" at a data center (I was just an 18 y/o kid and my job was to sit in the office all night alone).
This was in the very early days of the Internet so there was no Facebook, Youtube or Quora to kill time. Usually I took the time to study, or practice guitar, but sometimes one needs a break from that too.
I decided to photocopy my face, which led to my butt and ...other parts.
I was the only one in the building, so it was super easy. But then the paper got jammed ...after having copied my other parts. There was about one hour before the early people would start coming into the office. I had no idea how to open the very expensive copier. There was no manual anywhere.
I was pulling parts off the machine, trying to remember where it came from so I could put it back (no smart phone to just snap a picture, as a note of how to put it back together). I had pulled off and replaced a ton of parts that gave me no access to the jammed paper, and there were only thirty minutes or so until the first people start coming in. What if someone decided to come early today?
Long story short, I managed to figure out how to remove the offending jammed copy with literally only about three minutes to spare. I hadn't even had a chance to return to my "security room", and met them in the hall as I was walking back from the copy room, my photocopy neatly tucked into my pocket. Close call.
Continue to the next page for another creepy night shift story.
The Coffee Machine, by Vikram Murthy
Ah, night shifts!
Those sleepy eyes and weary hands not willing to work but still have to work.
I remember one such incident that happened to me when I was in a week long night shift work.
After 2 nights of work on the 3rd night, things were going as normal. The work was engrossing at that moment and I came to the pantry area to fill up my water bottle. As I was filling the bottle, a coffee vending machine next to me started making all sorts of rattling noises and it started shaking.
Imagine, around 1 AM in the night with no other soul in sight and this happens. I was s**t scared at the moment (thanks to the Transformers series). I froze there for quite sometime. The bottle started overflowing and the machine continued its drama.
Finally I gathered some courage to switch off the water tap and then slowly tilted my head to look at the coffee machine.
There on the little display of that machine were these words.........
****AUTO FLUSH****
That is the day (or night) where I learnt a very important aspect of coffee vending machines: Auto Flush!
Continue to the last page for one final scary night shift story...
The Man And The Closet, by M Melanie Chevalier
Years ago, while I was attending Arizona State University, I worked the night shift at a book store. Modern World Books. As a college student it was a great place to work. $25 an hour and flexible schedule. I typically worked in the stock room, on the computer, but one night I had to work the counter for an overnight shift.
During one of my rounds, making sure everything was in place, a very large man tried to shove me into the mop closet. I am sure that he had ill intent. When I say large, I mean he was a mountain.
I was carrying a knife at the time in my right hand, blade flat against my wrist, hidden in a way that the cameras wouldn't see I was carrying it. I instinctively threw up my hands, pushing him away from me. In the moment, I somehow got the knife up to his neck. As soon as he felt the knife against his neck, I had the advantage. I backed him out of the store and told him he was not allowed back in.
He called the police and said he wanted to file charges against me for assault. The police viewed the store video and told the guy if he continued and insisted on pressing charges against me that they would also have to file charges against him for attempted rape. They then said that he would most likely not win his case, that I would get off on self defense which would then be used in the case against him.
I was terrified that I would go to jail for defending myself. I was sure I was going to be fired because I was carrying knife, against store policy.
Amazingly, the video did not show the knife in my hand. You could only see this hulk of a man pick me up and throw me into the closet. Then for what appears to be no reason, him backing away looking scared. It was obscured the entire time by the way I was holding it.
Not the most terrifying night I have ever endured. But it is up there on the list.
Have you ever had a scary night story happen to you? We want to hear in the comments.
Psst... don't forget to share :)
I'm on the fence about high school. I want to hate it, but nostalgia haunts me. I saw a lot of violence, there is that.
We were on CNN.
don lemon nodding GIF by Red Table TalkGiphy"They started charging us for ketchup in the cafeteria. Most of the school boycotted cafeteria lunch and brought all manner of condiments from home. We were on CNN. They eventually caved." ~ Ash3Monti
No one liked him.
"I was big into drama club and musical theatre when I was in high school. There was a girl in the drama club in her freshmen or sophomore year who was super nice and everyone loved her. Her older brother on the the other hand, was a complete and total douchebag. No one liked him."
"He always made inappropriate comments or jokes and no one liked to be around him. One night, he was driving him and his sister back from school when he took a steep curve going around 100 mph. He lost control and hit a telephone pole. His sister died instantly and he was in a coma for a few weeks but ultimately survived."
"Myself and my friends in the drama club were devastated. She was one of the sweetest girls you'll ever met and we all loved her. A year or two later, the brother messages my sister and tries to use his sister's death as leverage to get laid. F**k you, you piece of crap." ~ FearTheKeflex
Bribes
"Guidance counselor was taking bribes to change grades (Both money and sexual favors). Invited one male student over to his house. Had the student tie him up and hang him by chains in his basement "dungeon." Student was homophobic and while the counselor was tied up, bludgeoned him to death." ~ monthos
H2O Issues...
"This is not that extreme, but it's still disgusting. We have drinking water taps instead of fountains. One parent was suspicious of whether they were cleaning the tanks or not. So they made an announcement that the tank was being cleaned every single day."
"A lot of us didn't believe it, so a group of boys decided to see for themselves if it was true or not. So they put a dead frog in the tank when there was no one around. I don't even know where they found the frog but they swear they didn't kill it. Anyway the frog was there for a few weeks. And obviously the water started tasting weird."
"After the teachers got multiple complaints, they opened the tank and found the frog. The boys were punished, but they fired back with the fact that they lied about cleaning the tanks. They were still punished, because they proved it in a disgusting way. They could've put literally anything in the tank, but they chose a dead frog." ~ R00mTemperature
The Quad
Acds2 Look Away GIF by Anime Crimes DivisionGiphy"A worker doing stuff on the roof. He fell off. Landed in the 'quad' at lunch. A large piece of machinery fell and squished his head. Like a cartoon, only funny. Like 150 Kids saw this." ~ LordInventus
Threats
"The Latin kings gang threatened my cousin and his friends and they had 10 squad cars guarding the whole school and dismissed us the same day early." ~ Terrykrinkle
“it’s gonna blow”
"I had just moved in from Egypt to the states in my senior year of high school. A teacher thought it would be funny to fold a bunch of papers and wrap them in duck tape to make it look like a bomb and threw it my direction and went under his desk saying 'it’s gonna blow.' Everybody started laughing and I was so clueless then I just laughed along. It infuriates me to this day that I didn’t call him out on it or report him." ~ ezzabousaif
Go Fish
"Someone somehow made a bomb threat on a Swedish fish candy. Like one single piece. I don’t know how it happened but he got arrested." ~ ts_13_
Masternid
"A couple weeks before graduation, this kid hacked into the school system and put a Hitler quote and a Boston bomber reference in the senior quotes for the yearbook. One of the affected parties was a trans girl, and we're still not sure if it was a targeted act because of that."
"Administration didn't find out until the entire senior class had received their books. Some people turned theirs in to get their pages replaced, but some kept it because it was a 'limited edition item' or some stupid sh*t like that. Kid got arrested and charged with cybercrime, since he hacked everyone in our school system's school passwords."
"He was so close to graduating too, but got expelled like two weeks before he could. Looked like a rat too. It was all over the news, and everyone in the state of CT basically knows about this now. Got out on bail for $5000." ~ kocorpsie
Season 3 What GIF by On My Block"Apparently one student brought drugs to school and was selling it to her friends. A completely unrelated student caught on and stole the drugs while everyone else was in class. She was caught snorting the drugs in the bathroom by the group selling the drugs and got the crap beat out of her."
"We also had a recently graduated student murder his parents for insurance money . He hid the bodies in a chicken coop and told everybody they were on vacation. It wasn't until 7 months later the bodies were found by the landlord because the rent was late." ~ randomgenericcow
Enjoy high school, at least try too. Maybe if more kids do that, it wouldn't be so insane.
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