When people go to work, they usually expect to be safe, but unsafe workplace practices, inattentive coworkers, and aggressive customers can get in the way of that. These workers are sharing the scariest day they ever had on the job and their tales are pretty terrifying.
They All Forgot He Was Showing Up That Day
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“When I was still a student architect, working part-time in a firm, we had an on-site workplace accident. We were doing some restoration work to an old hotel that had its roof blown off during the winter. The contract was going well, and the work on site was quick, but a storm came through and ended up causing more damage to the work site. We shut the site down; told the contractor to keep his workers off-site until we could have a surveyor come in and make sure everything was stable. The contractor cleared all his men off the site, but they forgot that there was a subcontractor working on site that day, removing old door frames. The damaged roof wasn’t pinned securely, and the whole thing came down, while the guy was still inside working. He died from his injuries and EVERYONE involved in that contract got sued. In the end, the contractor was found to be at fault, because it was their job to keep track of who was on site; but the architect also ended up folding just from legal costs.”
Despite The Heavy Police Presence, The Convict Made It Surprisingly Far
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“I used to volunteer in a hospital. One time, a convict was brought in and they had, no lie, five cops watching him and two by the door. Somehow, he broke part of the bed where his cuff was attached. He made a run for it plowing the cops over, hitting the emergency button to seal the door (buying him almost a minute), and hitting the cop by the door with the broken bed piece. The other one was using the can, that’s why there were two. He ran through radiology and made it downstairs and nearly out of the loading bay, but one of our security campus cops cracked him in the head with a board kept by the door.”
They Got A Call From The LAPD Asking For John
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“I used to be a manager at a big box retailer. One night, we got a call from LAPD (we weren’t in LA, but nearby), asking if we had an employee named ‘John.’ He was working in the stockroom that night, so they told us to not allow him on the sales floor for any reason. It turns out his uncle, high on something, had killed both of his parents and his younger sister and was heard talking about coming for ‘John,’ all over an inheritance of a few thousand dollars.
Within minutes of the phone call, local cops were both parked outside the building and stationed inside the doors with pictures of the uncle. Luckily for us, he was caught after he hit a bus stop driving to our store. LAPD detectives came and broke the news to ‘John’ in our stockroom. I’ve never heard such an awful sound of horror and anguish in my life, and hope never to hear anything like it again. The managers kept him on the payroll, falsifying his punches to make sure he kept his job until he was ready to come back and make sure he had money to live. He came back after six weeks a very different person.”
He Just Happened To Catch A Car Thief In The Act
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“I was outside, smoking on my break. We had to smoke by the employee parking area, and as I was sitting there, I saw a person crouched down in between two of my fellow employees’ cars and another car that was nearby, with the engine running and someone else in it. Obviously, it looked suspicious, so I went inside and alerted my manager. He was like, ‘Oh crap, someone’s trying to steal my car!’ So he ran out along with the assistant manager, with me following behind. When we got outside, the mysterious car was already speeding out of the parking lot, with my manager’s stolen car pulling out of the spot. My manager ran out to stop the guy (bad idea) and got slammed by this dude stealing the car. It was INSANE. The car drove off, and I called 911. The manager broke both legs, I think, and was out for almost a year.”
They Went In For A Wellness Check, But They Barely Left With Their Lives
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“I’ve been a cop for 19 years. About five years ago, my partner and I were dispatched to a welfare check on a 65-year-old man who had missed work for two days and no one could get him on the phone. The family was on scene and worried that he had gotten sick and was unable to call for help or, at worst, had passed away. I looked through the back window and saw trash scattered on the floor and a dog, which led me to believe that the family’s fears may be true. I knocked on the door and several windows trying to get someone to answer, but to no avail. Eventually, the decision was made to force entry into the home with the family’s permission. My partner broke a small window on the back door and reached in to unlock the door from the inside. When we opened the door, the dog ran out and we entered the home announcing ourselves. ‘County Sheriff’s Office! Is anyone home?’
No one answered. Neither of us had our service weapons drawn due to the fact that we were just checking on the welfare of a person and we both assumed he would be inside the home, deceased. As my partner was clearing a room adjacent to the kitchen, I heard something from the other end of the house. I shined my flashlight down a long hallway and saw a frail old man in his t-shirt and tighty-whitey underwear holding an AK-47 at the ‘low ready’ position, squinting his eyes, trying to see down the hallway. My partner and I immediately drew our weapons and began shouting, ‘SHERIFF’S OFFICE! DROP THE WEAPON!’
This guy wasn’t hearing any of it. After what seemed like forever, but was probably only about 10 LONG seconds, I told my partner to run out the back door. He took off and I bolted out the front door. We both took cover behind my patrol vehicle and began to shout commands through the car’s PA system. After about five minutes, the old man came out the back door, buttoning up his pants, wondering what was going on.
He had been sick the past two days and was on some heavy painkillers and was hard of hearing, which is why he didn’t hear us banging on the door and windows. He had been robbed in his home about a year prior and thought he was being robbed again when he awoke to us in his home. He told us he couldn’t hear what we were shouting but just saw the flashlights in his face. All my partner could say for the next few minutes was, ‘I almost shot that man, Frank. I almost shot him.’ He was a rookie with less than a year on the road.
My partner and I were praised by the Captain the next day for not killing that man in his own home. In hindsight, that would have been a nightmare. I’m thankful I didn’t pull the trigger and take his life and thankful he didn’t do the same to me.
This job is hard sometimes.”
“He Figured He Wasn’t In The Swing Area Of The Crane,” But He Was Wrong
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“I’m a construction superintendent. I’ve seen some stuff on the job that would make a lot of folks curl up into a ball and cry.
The worst was a crane accident. It was a 500-ton mobile crane, brand, shiny new, too. We were setting precast panels for a large office/warehouse combined building.
The oiler (aka crane operator in training) was polishing the shiny aluminum deck on the crane, while the crane was operating. He thought he was in a safe spot because the panels were on the truck over there and were being set over here. So he figured he was not in the current swing area of the crane. Except that the precast guys needed a box of plates that were on the opposite side of the crane, so the crane swung thataway.
The guy was smashed between the crane’s counterweights and the crane deck. He never made a sound, and the operator did not even know it had happened. His body was twisted and mangled nearly beyond recognition before one of the truck driver’s saw the blood. There were little bits of brain and bone spread all over the place.
It was horrible.”
That’s Not The Premium Slice She Meant To Make
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“I worked in a retail deli for seven years. I got hurt when I was cleaning a piece of machinery designed to transport used cooking oil to a tank in the back of the building. While cleaning it, I slipped and the base of my thumb grazed the sharp metal edge where the oil went in. I got cut and ended up getting eight stitches. I have a small scar there now, but nothing major.
However, the worst I’ve ever seen, though, was when a fellow employee cut the tips of two of her fingers off in the slicer. She screamed and ran past me into the backroom. I saw her clutching her fingers and I knew she got hurt, so I immediately called management, who called an ambulance. I looked over and the two teenage girls whom she had been helping were staring at me angrily like they were upset she didn’t finish their order. A few weeks later, she returned to work, now as a door greeter, fingers now missing portions of flesh.”
He Tried To Get More Work Done, Now His Hands Will Never Be The Same
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“My dad’s co-worker was working on a machine that would press rubber into a thin sheet. So you had to put the sheet in and take it out when you’re done. The machine had straps to make sure your hands wouldn’t stay inside when the press went down. Everyone hated those straps because it would slow them down (they got a bonus if they made more pieces than planned). One day, this guy decided not to put the straps on. The press went down, with his hands still in the machine. His hands melted. Poor guy lost his hands because he wanted to make a little more money.”
As Soon As He Spotted The Needle, He Was On High Alert
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“Lots of horror show stories from my old job as healthcare security. The area I worked in had a lot of problems with homelessness, addictions, and psych issues. You get used to a lot of weird stuff. But one time, I was asked to evict someone from the waiting room who’d been in the bathroom for an hour.
I opened the door and see him with a needle. Fine, we all suspected he was shooting up in there. Crappy, but it happens. Except he wasn’t. He was using his needle to extract blood from his arm and squirt it down the sink. Over and over again. Maybe he was trying to kill himself, or maybe he had some delusion of needing to purify his blood. He was speaking French the whole time, so it was unclear.
Nurses demanded we get him out of there. We tried, and the first thing he did was lunge at us and try to attack us with his bloody needle. The help we got from the nurses and doctors was their shouted assurances that yes, this guy was HIV positive. Which means if he even pricks me with that needle once, I am HIV positively-doomed.
Now, I know a lot of security guards out here are going to ask why I didn’t mace or taze him at this point. We don’t get those where I worked. In fact, we don’t get anything at all. Technically, I’m not even allowed to punch or kick this guy because patient safety is number one priority. So we have to grab something, anything, to fight off the guy with the needle. One of the guys at the desk grabbed a clipboard and used it as a shield against the needle while we wrestled this guy to the ground and waited for the cops to get there. I am glad nobody messed up.”
There’s Sore Losers, And Then There’s This Guy
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“I worked as a croupier at a casino, regularly had people come in whose money came from various illegal activities. One guy was losing tons of cash on my blackjack table and wasn’t happy about it. Despite all the cameras and security, after losing another hand, he went crazy. Smashed a glass and went to cut my face. I couldn’t leave the table with a $25,000 float still on it, so I ducked, grabbed the chip cover, and slammed it over the money. By this stage, the guy has grabbed everything not nailed down and started hurling it at me. I avoided a heavy glass ashtray, but it hit the roulette dealer a couple of meters away. He luckily only copped a bruise.
Our friend now had a big wood and studded leather stool held over his head, about to throw it. He was only half a meter away, so I braced myself for impact. He threw too hard; it glanced off my shoulder and hit the pit boss running over to help. He then screamed that he’d be waiting for me after my shift. This whole thing went down in maybe 90 seconds. Security rolled in to find him calmly leaning against a pillar, denying he’d done anything. I left the floor, was interviewed by police and told to go back to work. I asked to go home, they refused to let security walk me to my car. I never went back again.”
Despite His Many Signs And Warnings, The Inevitable Happened
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“Many years ago, I worked for a feed mill. Our mill was one of the largest in the state and served as the central distribution and sorting hub for smaller mills around us. So we’d get shipments of grain in by rail, usually 50 cars a day, and then turn around and unload them into the silos where they were sorted and distributed around the state. Due to the number of cars we were servicing, it meant that we had six shifts working around the clock in the railyard. Three were the intake/outtake shift, meaning they dealt with the cars that had just come in or those we’d unloaded; while the other three worked the unloading stations. This made things rather hectic since, at any given time, there’d be two or three locomotives moving in and around the plant.
In my time there, I worked primarily on intake, though I also would fill in during the spring to help the unloading guys. I worked there for a good six years before the company finally changed hands and I found a better job. In that time, I saw several horrible incidents, with most of them involving people being where they shouldn’t be.
In one incident, a guy was working at one of the discharge areas. One of the augers that take the grain from the floor pit up into the silos had jammed, and he was tasked with fixing it. Problem was, with the way the auger was set up, you couldn’t cut the power on the thing. The best he could do was put up several ‘Do not operate’ signs around it and make certain everyone and his brother knew not to come near it while he was working on the jam.
About three hours into the work, after getting the grates lifted up and moved, he had descended to work in the pit. While he was down there, this one guy who had just started working there, climbed up into the operator’s cabin and pushed the ‘cycle’ button. This turned the auger on and tore the guy in the pit into pieces. By the time another operator got up there to shut it down, it was too late.
When they investigated the incident, they found that the operator couldn’t speak or read English. The HR manager had known the guy, and figured he’d give him an easy job where all he had to do was sit and push a button, without ever considering that maybe being able to understand the people around him was a good idea.”
He Had No Idea How Serious The Fight Was Until He Saw Blood
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“I’m a former teacher. I once saw a fight going down just inside the boys’ room next to the cafeteria. I didn’t understand how bad it was until I grabbed the kid closest to me and flung him backwards against the wall. That’s when I saw the other kid holding his stomach and the blood oozing out of the stab wound through his fingers. That was the moment I realized the kid I’d just chucked behind was holding a weapon. That split second of vulnerability before I wheeled around on him was terrifying. Fortunately, the kid holding the cheap steak knife wasn’t as tough as he thought. He was still leaning against the wall right where I tossed him, looking like he was about to puke.
Turns out the kid that got stabbed was a bully and the other kid had had enough. The injury wasn’t serious and the school expelled the kid who did the stabbing.
I never noticed either of these kids before the stabbing. Neither of them were in my classes. I didn’t have cafeteria or study hall duties. But afterwards, you’d better believe I remembered the bully’s face. He was still a loudmouth after the incident. Acted like it gave him ‘street cred.’ However, I remember seeing him with his mom on a parent conference night. She was gakked out of her head. Never saw someone so humiliated as that kid that night. Not trying to defend his bullying. He was a crappy kid. But I understood where his defense mechanism was coming from.”
When He Saw Them Jump Out Of The Car, He Knew He Needed Out Of There Now
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“I worked security at a pier south of Boston.
There is a truck driving around in a peculiar way and being suspicious. Backing into hidden areas where no one should be parking, the two people in the vehicle watching me like a hawk.
The truck starts to pull out of the lot like they’re going to leave. I breathe a sigh of relief. That is until they do a quick 180 and are now making a bee-line for me in my security vehicle. I prepare my foot on the gas pedal for evasive maneuvers. The truck slows down and turns parallel to where I’m parked. The passenger door opens, and someone with a coat pulled over their head and a weapon in their hand jumps out of the truck.
I immediately slam on the gas and drive 60 mph back to another security site. The speed limit was like 35 in this area. I’m on the radio, frantically telling dispatch to get cops to the area, I almost got shot.
I get to the other security site with co-workers and begin telling them what happened. While I’m describing the truck, someone points behind me and goes, ‘Like that one pulling up right now?’
I’m like, ‘No way did they follow me. I was going fast.’
As the truck pulls up closer, I see it’s actually a co-worker in the passenger seat, totally wasted, and laughing his butt off. He somehow convinced his friend to drive up in his truck and do all this other crap. The weapon was actually an airsoft my co-worker had recently purchased to kill all of the pigeons that kept coming into his yard.
I chewed him out and told him that he’s lucky I didn’t just run him over then call it into the cops as a self-defense scenario.
Another co-worker goes to give me a ride home. On the way home, he gets into a screaming match with someone who had cut him off. The guy who cut him off then blocks off the intersection with his car, gets out, walks up to us, and pulls a real weapon from his waistband.
My co-worker slams the gas and takes an elaborate route back to my house to make sure we weren’t followed.”
After She Threatened To Call The Cops, He Turned His Bad Behavior Up A Notch
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“I used to work for an electronics store, and we were open late on Thursday nights. They weren’t ever busy, so we only had one person on from about 5 p.m. until closing at 9 p.m. This was in a nice, upper-middle-class neighborhood and I lived around the corner from the store, so that person was usually me.
One night, a guy comes in and he’s furious about some product he’s bought not working like he expected it to. It’s not faulty; he just didn’t do his research when he bought it and thought it was a different thing. We can’t return or refund it in this case. I’m explaining this to him, and he’s getting angrier and angrier, and eventually moves into threatening. I tell him if he’s going to be like that, I’m going to call the police. He grabs me by the collar over the counter and says, ‘Well, you’d better call them pretty quickly then.’
I should point out here that this guy was about 6 foot 4 inches, and I am a 5-foot woman. I was also 19 at the time. This is about as terrifying as it gets. I slam the emergency button under the counter, the police station is less than a minute away so I figure they’ll be there quickly enough.
The guy, at this point, lets go of my collar and shoves me into the wall behind the counter, then comes around and pins me against the wall. He’s shaking me and screaming in my face when the cops get there. I spend the rest of the evening giving statements, no serious damage done but a lot of bruising.
For bigger purchases at this store, we take ID for the warranty. After I explained to the manager what happened, she pulled his ID from the system so she could familiarize the staff with his face and we could contact security if he ever came back. The address on his license was right across the street from my house. I lived in that house for a year and never once left the house without being terrified I’d run into him. Needless to say, I don’t work there anymore.”