My janitor job scares the freaking-freak outta me. I would rather fly to Kenya alone a million times over than be alone in a creaky old building at 2:30 in the morning.
Seriously. My nerves can’t handle this.
I’m to the point now where I know what my imagined assailant looks like. And I’ve written the headline of the news story that will document my demise. If I thought about it long enough I could write the whole story. #overactivejournalistimagination
Maybe I’m a bit paranoid. I catch shadows out of the corner of my eye and I have to talk myself off the ledge and lower my broom. I never vacuum the one-way hallway with my back to the entrance. If someone’s comin’ for me I want to see it. I startle about once every 3.5 minutes approximately and usually it’s because the obnoxious loud AC/heat unit is cranking up, or I catch my reflection in the window.
But my jittery nerves have some validity for feeling this way.
It was 9:30 Halloween night, I was in an exam room emptying the trash. I catch a wisp of a person out of the corner of my eye and I freak the freakity-freak out.
I poked my head out of the exam room. Y’all. I was NOT making this one up. There was a HUMAN walking down the hallway to the breakroom. I didn’t know if I should follow her, or duck under the sink.
So I said, “Hello? Um, you really scared me.”
To which she said nothing.
And I really thought this person was going to kill me.
“Hi, wow, you really scared me.”
She wisped back down the hallway.
“Have fun,” she said. Have fun.
“You scared me. Have a good night.”
And then she left.
Heart returned to chest.
A couple weeks later I was vacuuming. 3 a.m. I heard a pounding. I told myself to stop making it up. More pounding. I told myself it was the heater unit and most definitely not someone pounding on the window, but oh yes. Oh yes, it was, and there was a FACE pressed against the glass!
I’m actually not even sure why I reacted as cooly as I did.
“What do you need?”
“I need a ride to 123 FM 123. My buddies left me. I don’t have a ride.”
“Sorry, but I can’t do that.”
“I’ll pay you. Please. It’s just right down the road.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to do that.”
And my voice wasn’t even shaking or my hands sweating, though my mind told me to edge sideways from the window in case he got mad and pulled a gun.
“Do you have a phone book so I can call a cab?”
“Sir, you need to walk to the downtown square and get a cab. They’re there all night for people like you.”
“There’s none there. Can’t you just give me a phone book?”
“I don’t work here. I don’t know where one is.”
He started walking away and I started melting down. I called the police. Uh-huh. I sure did.
I waited 12 minutes. The police hadn’t shown up yet, but I had worked myself into freak-out, so I decided to leave. Uh-huh. I sure did. I did not want to be there when the police showed up because I did not want the man to know I called the police on him because I didn’t want him to come back for revenge. Some people are weird about that.
Two minutes later the dispatcher called wanting to know where I was. She said they made contact with the man and he was calling a cab.
So anyway. Horrifying.
I’ve upped my security measures. I do most of the cleaning in the dark to avoid drawing attention to an empty building with a girl in it. I always make sure the key is IN the lock before I step outside, and the trash ALWAYS gets tossed out first. The thinking is that if someone’s waiting for me on the steps, the bags of trash will knock them over and I’ll have time to scream and call 911. Sometimes I even carry a piece of trash, like a box or a bag, so that I have some sort of shield. And even though it’s a short distance from the door to the dumpster I always put the bags of trash on top of my car and drive to the dumpster. I never enter the outside until I’ve sufficiently scanned the parking lot twice.
My heart and my nerves and my blood pressure can’t take this anymore. I decided a few weeks ago that I quit janitoring.
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