From and a girl wearing a big red gown playing hide and seek with a mystery person inside a carwash, to a bookstore employee going on a rage in the dead of night, night shift workers recount the most memorable night on their job.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
Will Never Look At Perrier Water The Same Way Again
“I worked overnights stocking the local grocery store. A couple of the guys were sworn enemies on the night crew, we’ll call them Bean and Jeffrey. They were often general pricks to each other but that was soon to change. Jeffrey asked Bean to ‘let me borrow your box cutter biotch.’ Apparently, Bean had enough, stormed off to collect two Perrier bottles (carbonated water with really thick glass) and proceeded to clock Jeffrey with them. He basically swung the bottles at the left and right side of Jeffrey’s head at the same time. Jeffrey was concussed, cut up really bad, and was knocked out for a couple minutes. He went to the ER and Bean took off as he had just committed assault with a deadly weapon. The amount of blood from this incident was shocking. There was a solid 15-foot radius of blood and it took numerous mop buckets to clean up.
That is all really rare and slightly disturbing but there is more. Bean took off to another major city in the midwest and was later arrested and returned to our locale to be charged. Jeffrey, oddly concerned for his job, left the hospital and walked back to work at least 8 miles. He had a giant hard wrap/bandage around his head and really should have been in bed recovering. So we lost 2 guys for most of the night but had a really crazy event to discuss.
Can’t Stop Eating
“I worked the night shift at Mickey Ds growing up. This big fat guy came in one night and ordered 5 of the 2-for-2 Big Macs (this is back in the ’90s) and sat down and ate all 10 in a row without stopping.
Then he threw up and walked out.
The very next night, he came in again, ordered the same thing, and then puked again and left promptly.
The third night he came in and he started to order and I stopped my cashier from proceeding with the order, I asked him if he was going to order the same thing he would have to take it home because I’m not cleaning up his puke again.
Turns out the guy was sneaking out of the psychiatric hospital down the road. He had some mental thing where he can’t stop eating and he always pukes.
I paid for his meal and he took it back with him. Never saw him again.”
Gas Station Night Shift Horror Show
“A few years ago, I was working graveyard for a gas station convenience store. I’m a female and was 25 at the time.
Graveyard shift always worked alone from 10 pm until 6 am. Every night I would lock the doors at around 2 am so I could close out my drawer, stock the walk-in cooler, mop the floors, etc.
When I was doing this I would put a sign on the door that I was temporarily closed for cleaning but would open again in 45 minutes.
So one night, I had the sign hung up and doors locked, and I was in the back office getting a bunch of bottled drinks ready to stock the cooler. Suddenly I heard a loud banging on the doors. I looked at the monitor on the desk (surveillance cameras) and I could see a huge man at the doors, obviously ticked off.
I waited a little while, hoping he would just give up and go away but he kept pacing back and forth, banging on the doors, and jostling them back and forth hard. I was afraid he was going to break the doors down.
Finally, I went out and told him that I was closed for cleaning and that I’d be open again at 3 am, and then I just kept walking to the cooler, hoping he would see that I was busy and just leave me alone.
He finally left and I breathed a sigh of relief as I continued my work.
I finished all my duties, and all that was left for me to do before I opened again was to take all the garbage out. So I grabbed the bags and headed out the door. As soon as I walked out of the door, a figure across the parking lot rounds the corner of the building next to mine. I paused and realized it was the same guy, and he was dragging a baseball bat behind him, walking straight at me.
I just stood there, unsure of what to do. If I dropped the bags and ran inside, I would have to run around the counter and flip the maglock switch to lock him out and he was too close, he would make it to the doors before they locked. Do I just keep walking towards the dumpster? All this was going through my head in those couple seconds I was paused, freaking out not sure what to do.
Right then, as I was sure this man was going to kill me, Ricky, God bless that wonderful Ricky, pulled into the parking lot. Ricky was one of the night stock crew at the Albertsons store across the street from my store. He would come in every night for a fountain drink, but tonight he was late, and simultaneously right on time!
As Ricky pulled in, the man looked at Ricky and then changed his course and headed towards the door instead of straight at me. Ricky looked at me and could tell I was terrified. The man leaned his bat against the wall outside the door and walked in. Ricky and I followed him in. I went to the counter and Ricky got his drink, then asked if I was ok. I begged him to please stay with me until this guy left. He agreed, and we waited, nervously making small talk while we watched this guy.
Finally, the guy came to the counter with a large slurpy and tried to pay with his EBT card (food stamps). I explained to him that Slurpees are not an approved EBT item and that he will have to use another payment method. So he grabbed the slurpy, and dumped it on my floor!
I flipped out. Nobody… NOBODY messes with my freshly mopped floors and gets away with it. I screamed at this guy like a psychotic banshee to get his butt out of my store. He was screaming crap back at me, inching his way out the door. He was hanging out the door trying to reach for his bat, but he had to slip just out of the door to reach it and CLICK… I had the maglocks engaged.
I immediately phoned the police and thanked Ricky profusely, who then quickly scooted out to get back to work.
After the cops finally showed up, they caught the guy and told me he was a local vagrant that was in and out of prison for various charges, and that he also had been in and out of the mental institution and apparently was off his meds.
When my boss came in to take over the morning shift, I completely broke down. I was shaking and sobbing and terrified. I told her that she either needed to move me to day shift or schedule someone to work nights with me so I wasn’t alone. She said she couldn’t do either, so I quit.
Come to find out, at the time of this incident I was two-months pregnant with my daughter.”
The Underage Kid And His Ladies
“I was working the front desk of a hotel. Sometime after 1 a.m., a group of ‘working ladies’ came through the door of my lobby.
A total of about 15 ladies of the night came through the door, and behind them, ushering them in, followed a young man who didn’t look any older than 16, total baby face. The kid winked at the group of women and said ‘just a moment, ladies’ to them all. I was speechless.
The kid came up to the desk and said he had a reservation. I asked him for his ID for check-in, and we certainly did have a reservation under his name. However, he was only 17. We do not rent rooms to anyone under 18 at the hotel.
So here was this kid, apparently having somehow hired every single lady he could find from god only knows where unable to provide for his newfound harem as he had planned with the hotel room.
To be honest, I almost felt a bit bad telling him; this kid had balls. I explained our age policy, and he said ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ with this look in his eyes like he was James Bond or something, and turned from the desk to leave.
Queue all 15 or so of these ladies flocking to his side, putting their arms around him, patting him on the back and cooing at him with ‘don’t worry honey, we can get us a room, don’t you worry one bit, we’ll just go down the road ok?’ In the softest and motherly way.
They flocked out the door, holding his hands, and he turned to me and flashed the biggest grin possible as he left.”
In And Out Of Jail
“When I worked the night audit shift at a hotel I was assaulted by a guy who wanted to go to jail to be with his brother (clearly a genius). We full on trashed the lobby of the hotel. During the course of our brawl, he got ahold of a broken leg of a chair and hit me over the head with it. I got him in a headlock and pummeled his face. There was a Dennys across the parking lot that on any other night would have had four cop cars; there were none that night. Luckily (after I called 911 twice), a very surprised guest came down to check out. He left, the cops finally came and couldn’t believe there was no reason for this prick to attack me. Apparently, this kid (19 I think) was well known to the cops for beating his grandparents who he lived with but they would never press charges. I had no such problem. He ended up getting two years in the pokey. About three years later I was watching the news and saw where he had gotten into a shootout with the cops. Unfortunately, he lived and I check the state prison system website from time to time and last I checked he’s still in prison – he’s got all the awful prison tats to prove it too.”
Being The Hero Doesn’t Always Work Out
“For a summer in college, I was a stocker at a Walmart that closed at 12 am. My shift was from 10am-7am. This was a small town Walmart that didn’t get much in the way of shipments. I think each night the whole team would have 2,000 pieces to stock (think half a semi of widgets between fifteen guys and two managers).
I was always assigned to stock paper products and I’d finish at two usually. When I did, I’d hollow out a shelf of toilet paper (this was back when they kept them on the huge racks) and make a bed. I’d then restock the toilet paper flawlessly so anyone walking past would be none the wiser.
I woke from one of my nap sessions to a bunch of shouting. Some walnut had hollowed out his own shelf in electronics before closing time. He seized what he thought was the opportunity and made a run for the exit. Right past me. I tackled our Robin Hood friend.
Adrenaline is a funny thing. It interrupts some thoughts and mixes them in with others. In my ADHD fueled impulse I tried to say ‘oh yeah’ like the kool-aid guy and ‘hi’ at the same time. Result:
‘OH HI!’ I screamed as I exploded from the toilet paper. Scared the crap out of that guy. And broke the TV. And got fired because they found out I was napping in alcoves of Charmin.”
Going Through The Spookiest Building
“I’m an EMT. Maybe a year ago, I picked up overtime working 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.
At around 3 a.m., we got a call with no supplemental information. We headed over, and the address was an ENORMOUS Masonic temple. Huge pillars, lots of marble, etc. We found a woman pounding hysterically on the giant oak doors. They were solidly 12 feet tall and felt like they were a foot thick.
She told us that her boyfriend, who was in charge of locking up at night, texted her about an hour before saying he had chest pain, shortness of breath, and was extremely nauseous (classic symptoms of a heart attack). She reported he was no longer answering his phone and was locked inside somewhere.
We called firefighters to come break down the door, which they did, with considerable effort. Having gained entry, we realized that our work has just begun. The temple is five stories tall, and about half a city block.
Of course, we couldn’t find any light switches anywhere, and the interior was even spookier than the exterior. We began searching room by room, floor by floor.
The fact that it was the middle of the night, we were in an unfamiliar pitch-black building with freaky interior design, running around with flashlights and that we ultimately thought we were searching for a corpse all lead to a lot of jumpiness.
Each floor we climbed, things got spookier. By the fourth floor, there were lots of candles, velvet, and traditional scary stuff laying around. We got up to the fifth and final floor, and at the end of a long dark hall, we saw a closed door with a light on behind it. My partner and I were both freaked out at this point, and as we crept towards the door, our hearts were beating faster and faster. We looked at each other, took a deep breath, threw the door open, and the guy was pleasuring himself at his computer with headphones on.
He jumped up and started screaming. We ran out of the room screaming. The firefighters heard our screams and started screaming. After we all calmed down, he explained that he had eaten a burrito earlier, and had texted his girlfriend complaining of gas pains.
We left as he started to wonder out loud how we had gotten inside, given that he had locked the front doors.”
Police Must Be Quite Familiar With This Donut Shop
“For a while, I worked the night shift at a certain Canadian 24-hour coffee and donut shop in a rather bad neighborhood (and I was the only person working). One night, a guy had come in, bought a coffee and sat down at a table alone. There was no one else in the restaurant, but that wasn’t unusual. He was there for about an hour, nursing the same cup of coffee when I started to mop the floors. As I got close to him, he asked, very quietly, if I could help him with something.
Me: ‘Sure, what can I do for you?’ I step closer to his table
Man: ‘I just caught my wife cheating on me. I’m going to hurt myself.’ Looks up at me, looks into my eyes. ‘Or someone else.’
One of the terrifying moments of my life. I told him I would get help, then called 911. Police and an ambulance came, they loaded him into the ambulance and took him away.
Another story: same coffee shop, different night. It’s about 3 a.m. and, as I said previously, this is a particularly bad neighborhood. In walks an 8-year-old boy. Alone.
I was thinking this is a bit weird but thought that maybe his parents are in a car in the parking lot and just sent him in to buy something. He walked up to the counter and ordered a dozen donuts. At this point, I was pretty sure there were no cars in the parking lot other than my own. He pulled out a debit card (not exactly a common item for an 8-year-old) to pay for the donuts. I decided to call the police before I ring him through so I told him to wait for a minute and I went to the back of the store to call the police. Just as I told the operator what was going on I heard the doors to the store open and close – the kid had taken off. Luckily some regulars, Brink’s armored car drivers, who were on their way into the store, figured out what was going on and stopped the kid before he got far.
Police arrived soon afterward. It turns out, the kid had run away from home early on the previous day, and police were already looking for him all over the city. He had taken his mom’s debit card (and knew her pin), was quite far from home, and figured that donuts would be a good meal.”
He Had A Point
[Brian Eichhorn][1]/Shutterstock
[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Brian Eichhorn
“Was a dispatcher at night, alone in the whole office. Our dept faced the front of the building and had a large glass window. The large window had those large verticle blinds so you couldn’t be seen from outside but you could somewhat see what is outside.
One night at about 2 am, from the corner of my eye I see movement outside. I get up and inspect and see a homeless dude, buck naked, all soaped up taking a full-on bathing session in the auto sprinklers. Dude was totally giving some attention to the nether region when he noticed me. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t look at it!’ he barks. I couldn’t argue with that, so I went back to work.”
This Extremely Well-Trained Raccoon
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“I used to work in a McDonalds in a rather sketchy part of the city, lots, and lots of stories.
One time I was working drive-thru and a woman came through and never actually grabbed any of the food or paid, but her pet raccoon who she had been training did. The little bugger sat there holding her debit card outstretched. We took it and used it to check her out, then handed it back, raccoon proceeded to go and drop it in the woman’s purse, it clambered back up to her shoulder and took the bags of food and went and sat in the passenger seat. The woman never spoke during any of this. After the raccoon sat down, the woman reached into the bag, grabbed a burger, unwrapped it and handed the whole burger to the raccoon. The raccoon ate it relatively quickly. For some reason, she decided to not pull up during any of this.
I still don’t know 1) How this woman trained a raccoon to do all that, a more intelligent animal like some monkey I could understand, but a raccoon, and 2) How this poor animal hadn’t died from supposedly eating so much fast food?!”
Retail Rage
“I worked overnight at a chain bookstore in the middle of Washington, D.C. years ago. We were mostly underground, with windows only in the very front of the building, and in a narrow strip for about twenty feet along one side. The surrounding neighborhood had a decent number of bars, and on weekend nights the street outside would be hoping until way late.
Well, one weekend night, our boss went missing. One of us needed him for something, and all we wound up combing every corner of the building trying to figure out where he could be. Eventually, he turned up, looking disheveled and bruised, and claimed he was in the bathroom cleaning up after he hit his head on a shelf.
Later, after we got off in the morning, he admitted to what happened: He was shelving in the section over by the windows when a couple of guys knocked on the glass and proceeded to moon him through the window. In a fit of rage, he ran out of the store and chased after the guys, bellowing at the top of his lungs, ‘SHOW ME YOUR BUTT!’ They ran for several blocks before he caught up with them, and he got into a clumsy fistfight with them where they were too sloshed to do much damage, but managed to knock him down anyway. He crawled back to the store limping and bleeding from a cut on his head and somehow got away with it because nobody checked the cameras that night.
This guy also had a cat named after the little person who babysat him as a kid, ate the same food every day, and went on to become a janitor for Homeland Security.”
Those Rare Loud Nights At The Hospital
[Luis Molinero][1]/Shutterstock
[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/Luis Molinero
“I work the overnight shift at a psychiatric hospital. It’s usually quiet, but I work with a lot of bipolar people, some of whom are having severe manic episodes that result in psychotic symptoms (hearing/seeing things, delusional thinking, not sleeping, etc), so occasionally people are up most/all night. It can be a trip.
My favorite/worst experience was shortly after I started. A guy who was very aggressive came out and asked for something to help him sleep. The nurse wasn’t on my side of the unit at the time and I can’t handle meds or leave the floor (I was alone), so I asked if he could wait. He could not. He wasn’t having my explanations that I wasn’t allowed to get him anything, I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t make the nurse finish helping someone elsewhere and come here any faster, etc.
His voice was steadily rising, and now he was yelling in an otherwise silent unit. The first person to wake up is a lady fond of yelling herself for no reason at all. She would just scream and sometimes didn’t even seem to be aware she was doing it. She started up, as if in response to aggressive guy’s yelling. Now two people are screaming, and everyone is awake and filing out of their rooms, wondering what is going on. More than one person is fairly annoyed because it’s 2:30 a.m. Someone makes the mistake of starting to bicker with an aggressive guy, who has hit people before and doesn’t seem shy about trying again. Between the screaming lady, the aggressive man yelling and posturing, and the guy bickering with him, with a background noise of general chatter, I gave up trying to get a handle on this and went to push the little panic button I have when the night nurse finally walked in. He’s worked there for 14 years, so he managed to de-escalate everything in a manner of minutes, got the angry man his meds, and everyone went back to bed. He started laughing at me because I apparently looked like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out what to do first and how to do it without making anything worse. Thankfully nights like that are rare.”