I work in the Civic Opera Building in downtown Chicago. We have a small office with only four employees and we are often alone in the office if other coworkers are off or traveling or whatever.
Yesterday, there were two of us in the office and the other guy that was here left a few minutes early, at about 10 minutes to Five. About 30 seconds after he left, I heard the door open again but I just assumed it was him coming back to grab something he’d forgotten. I was busy wrapping up some work so I didn’t really pay attention to him. Not something I would ever give a shit about.
Ten minutes later, at 5:00, I was getting ready to leave and just as I was shutting my computer down, I heard a cough from the back area of our office. I thought that it might be our boss, who tends to keep odd hours and it wouldn’t be unusual for her to come in to do some work at the end of the day. And then I remembered that she’s in Oakland for a few more days and probably not also in her office in Chicago.
Ok, so maybe it’s a housekeeper. They’re not usually in our offices so early but it’s not impossbile. I decide to check it out, and walk back to where I’d heard the cough… AND THERE IS SOME DUDE HANGING OUT IN MY BOSS’S OFFICE!!!
The guy was youngish, mid to late 20’s I’d guess. He was incredibly dirty and looked homeless. He was wearing one flip-flop sandal and had the other one in his hand. When I asked him what he was doing, he just said “I’m just leaving… I’m just leaving.” When I asked more pointedly why he was in our office, he said “I was just exploring.” He seemed very sheepish, guilty, and stoned on something.
I considered trying to keep him in the office until I could get security called, but since I was alone by this time I didn’t think cornering this guy was a great idea. I followed him out of our office and down the hall to the elevator bank. He got on an elevator and I decided to get on with him as I wanted to point him out to security and if I’d waited for a 2nd car to arrive, I’d probably lose him. I admit this was a pretty foolish decision, getting into a small confined space w/ someone who I’d just caught trespassing.
I felt even more foolish about getting into the elevator w/ the guy becasue as we traveled down to the lobby from the 9th floor, around the 4th floor, he reached his hand up towards the button panel - specifically above the main panel to a smaller panel that had a big red emergency stop switch. He held his hand near it for just a moment before lowering his arm back down. The motherfucker was thinking of stopping the elevator!!! So that scared the shit out of me. He was a little shorter than me and I’m a somewhat bigger (fat) guy so I thought that if he tried anything I could probably take him down without too much effort. I didn’t think he had a weapon, but he could have had a knife somewhere on him I suppose.
As soon as the doors opened to the lobby I exited quickly and went over to the security desk to point the guy out. He was moving kinda slowly, I think hoping I’d leave and he could go after I was well gone. I showed him to the girl at the security desk and she just said, “Ok, I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back in.” I was hoping she’d grab him or something but he just left.
When I got back to the office this morning, I went back to my boss’s office where I found the guy. Nothing seemed out of place or missing. She doesn’t really keep much in her office so there wasn’t really anything to take. I did notice that her PC monitor’s screensaver was running, but she keeps her computer on most of the time so it’s not really an abnormal thing to see it on, but I decided to check out the Internet Explorer history… Sure enough, under “Monday” in the history was about a dozen different porn links along w/ records of Yahoo searches for certain porn sites (one was something involving Thongs.)
So I’ve Inspector Parker’dthe situation and I’m pretty sure that when I found him w/ only one flip-flop on, he was just at the tail end of getting his pants back on after whacking it in my boss’s office to Thong porn. He must have heard me coming and had to get dressed real quick.
I went downstairs and raised some hell w/ the building manager this morning. He was very understanding and apologetic but he basically said “We have an open building from 7a to 6p and it’s hard to manage who is coming and going, especially at the end of the day when most people are leaving work.” He also said that the security people are only there to try and keep people out (which they obviously failed at here) and that they’re not trained to apprehend or confront people. He said that since we don’t have a receptionist to watch the front, we should just keep our office suite locked at all times.
Anyway, that happened…Seemed like a good story to share w/ the Dope this morning.
At least he didn’t ask for “Jason.” (link to thread from a few weeks ago about my apartment being broken into). I would have lost my shit if that had happened, since then I’d know for sure that there was a glitch in the Matrix.
