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 :)
Try not to follow the bad advice given here, because you don't want to get the results that these guys did.
U/Duckerton375 asked: What's the worst advice someone ever gave you, but you still followed?
The workplace can bring a cornucopia of terrible advice. Don’t follow these unless you want to get fired.
​Bad jobs are usually not worth it.
Stick with a job no matter how bad it is. I stayed with a terrible job working retail, dealing with horrible customers and sexual harassment. I was told I wouldn't find anything better.
"No, no, you misunderstand. I said you wouldn't find anything better at making you feel like complete garbage."
This gets really creepy really fast.
frustrated workplace GIFGiphy"After you put in a job application, you need to call them at least once a day every day until they hire you."
Note: this did not get me hired. It got me called out by the HR person I was calling and forbidden to ever contact their facility again.
I work for a law firm that employees over 1500 people in the home office alone. Once I received a call from the building security saying, "Insert Name is here to speak with the owner." Well we are run by a committee so that's odd. Found out they just applied for a job and wanted to talk directly to the person that would potentially hire them. Told him the firm will contact them to schedule an interview. They refused to leave without "talking to the owner." Had security escort them out of the building.
​This is absolutely not true.
"Sleep is for people who do not want success" great words from my uncle, it almost killed me.
Now I may be oversleeping.
​Interpersonal relationships are also a big breeding ground for terrible advice. Don’t listen to any of these.
Heartbreaking.
My father always tought me and my brother that "having friends is bad and in the end they will never be there for you" so everytime I told my father about my friends he would get kinda mad and give me the advice to stop talking to them.
Now I am afraid of people and have several trust issues, thanks dad.
​This won’t end well.
A Christmas Story GIF by filmeditorGiphyIn the fifth grade my teacher was talking about bullying, then she said "if anyone tries to bully you just agree with them." So the next time I got bullied I agreed with the bully and they bullied me more.
Dude one time I saw an anti bullying video that told the victims to just BE NICE TO THE BULLY. Like the bully was hurling insults and the victim was smiling and complimenting him. My first thought was about how much I hated the mere thought that this would work. My second thought was of how the people who came up with that method had clearly never been bullied.
​Oof.
When I met my now wife at the age of 19, one of my coworkers said that it's very important to start at the bottom with presents and work your way up, she still has the socks I gave her on our first anniversary on the wall over our bed as a reminder...
I'm still trying to teach my boyfriend about good presents and bad presents. Biscuits from the supermarket = bad present. Cheap unbranded laptop battery from China as my only present = bad present (and only lasted 2 months). Anything off my 7-page wishlist = good present. It's literally a list of things I want to receive as presents.
​Can tell you from experience that this is a bad idea.
Had a falling out with some friends. My husband recommended I reach out to an old friend who ghosted me suddenly in a manner that induced some pretty severe abandonment trauma. Went for it anyways because "it's been so long, surely they changed". Am now experiencing the same things as last time.
When you follow bad advice, it can lead to mistakes that you just can’t come back from.​
Buying a house is tricky.
for sale dancing GIF by Lisa VertudachesGiphy"Buy a home now before the prices go up!" -my FIL in 2006.
We bought in 2007 and paid $259,500 for our 1,300 sq ft house (we really couldn't afford it and had an 80/20 so we had 8% interest for one loan and 6% on the other) and in 2008 it was worth $97,000 so refinancing wasn't even an option. We watched all of our neighbors walk away or get foreclosed on but we kept paying our bills and as of this very moment our house is worth $462,000. I'm so happy we stuck it out, we both worked our @sses off and the house will be paid off in 2 years.
It worked out for us, it's a horrible idea. Especially since 1300 sq ft houses are $460+k
My heartbreaks for future generations, I honestly don't know how people are going to afford housing in the future.
It’s there for a reason.
"Never apply for any government assistance."
Cue years of suffering trying to work full-time with a painful disability. Quit a particularly terrible job, and wanted to apply for food aid until I could find another gig; a friend with lots of DHS experience recommended I apply for Social Security "just to get in the system." Turns out my disability was bad enough to get accepted the first time, which I wasn't expecting. Really could've used that support, oh, the 30+ previous years of my life.
Credit is important to have.
I was told to not get a credit card until after college. I was super fortunate to have my college paid for so I had no loans, car paid in cash, no credit card or anything to start building credit. Found myself out in the world at 22 years old with a credit score of 0.
So while a lot of this bad advice came from trusted people, oftentimes they were too misinformed to give that advice in the first place. Don't trust the word of one person--do your research, and make decisions for yourself.
It'll be way better in the long run