After Hours

At the beginning of this year I lost my job, after several months of unemployment I ended up landing a job with a local cleaning company as a general cleaner.

A few months before I started, one of the buisnesses we clean for had a tragedy. It resulted in a hostage siutation and in the end only the aggressor was injured. They ended up blowing their head off with the same gun they used to hold several people hostage in the office.

The hostage room had already been locked up by the time I started and the company standard was it was not to be used. I don't really know why, it was simply a decision they made.

About three weeks ago the company suddenly decided they would be using the locked office again. Apparently they hired some new employees and one of them said they wouldn't mind using the hostage room.

We had to go in, pull all the furniture out, dust, clean, wipe down stuff and then finally I stripped and waxed the floor. Then we went through and put everything back together. A few of the cleaning company's employees refused to work in the room, due to the fact a few of them were actually involved in the hostage situation.

Because I have a lot of experience working on the floors, I am bascially their one man floor crew. In order to avoid people and unnecessary traffic, I come in at night to clean and wax floors and offices. I come in around 6PM and I leave when I am done with a certian area. Sometimes I am there for 3 hours, sometimes I am there for 8 hours.

One night I was waxing a rather large office when I suddenly heard someone walking down the hall. It was about 1 o'clock in the morning -- no one besides myself should be in the building. I stuck my head out into the hall, I saw nothing and I heard nothing.

I called out, "Hello, is anyone there?" and only silence responded.

I finished up my shift and start to pack up my supplies amd put everything away in the janitor's closet. On my way I have to perform a "security check" to make sure everything is locked and secure. That's when I discover the hostage room door opened about half a foot wide.

Why did this bother me? To begin with, in order to access the building after hours, you have to have a specially programmed fob to unlock the doors. The only other doors to the outside were fire escape doors. The second reason? Each night when I start my shift the first thing I do is go through each and every office and empty out the trash, turn the lights out and lock the doors.

I quietly locked the door to the office again and then did a double check around the building to make sure no one was in the building and then left. Is it possible someone was in the building after hours? Of course it is, but I didn't hear anyone leave the building and the security lock makes a very distinct sound when someone enters or leaves the building.

What was it? I don't really know. It could have been a lot of things, just another thing I chalk up to the unknown.