Bit of a WTF today. I had to get rid of a drunk in the building. But it wasn't probably what you think when I say that.
My boss owns the building he runs his company out of. He set it up as a coworking space as well. Pay a monthly fee, come to the building, use our printers, internet, have desks with monitors setup to plug your laptop into. Network, yadda yadda.
The last couple days I'd heard about a new person in the coworking space that was already making people really nervous. My first encounter with them was yesterday. Mid 30s, tank top with a bunch of multicolored stuff on it, shorts, knee high socks and crazy shoes. The crowning jewel though was a trucker hat with the cheap, plastic gold dollar sign pinned to the front. They claimed to be from an organization called LGBTQ+ Swim Club, or something like that. (No one could verify this organization actually existed.) When I met them they were in the printer area, printing documents for the COURT appearance they had that day, escorted by their rather normal looking 50 year old father. Then the stories started to come out. That they were in the building late, flipping off always on lights all across the building, the ones we use for our security cameras. People googled them and found out they had three arrests (one of which they were going to court for now.) One was protesting outside the capitol and doing something extreme. Another was for destroying art in an art gallery at a local college. Another was some violence or assault charge. My friend who is LGBTQ as well found their Facebook page and let's just say there was some......really questionable signaling going on there.
So in my head I was like "well this dude is a ticking time bomb. They probably won't last a week before they force someone's hand." My boss went on vacation today after a 3 day business trip. So he was out of the building, leaving essentially his subordinate in charge.
Today they started posting coding videos in one of the shared building Discord channels, the kind of argumentative stuff programmers will react to like "Why OOP is bad." He starts acting like the Discord is a forum and some of the junior devs start weighing in and mocking him, and eventually my lead developer has to come in to tell everyone to knock it off. My feeling is the fuse is getting shorter by the second.
I'm literally heading for the back door at 5 to go home, when my friend asks me if I'm leaving in a tone that lets me know something is going down.
It's reported from upstairs near the coworking area that this guy has been pounding back Natty Lights at a rate of about 1 every 10 minutes. Apparently he was doing it the previous days he's been here too, just coming in with a laptop and a case of the cheapest high alcohol beverage you can buy. By the time I hear about it he's on his 7th and I watch him crack open his 8th.
My boss gets informed and tells his subordinate to come to the office, tell the guy to leave and call police non-emergency when he does. I opt to stay at work and back him up since.....no one is really sure what this guy is capable of and no one else is volunteering to deal with it.
We find him upstairs, still wearing the same getup from yesterday. My coworker introduces himself and politely explains that he's in violation of the building rules about drunkenness and asks him to leave the building. The guy immediately starts arguing with him. Saying he can't do this to someone who pays to be there. He's informed that we can, and we have. He says he's not ready to leave and is told, you're leaving now. So then he goes straight into "So you hate gay people huh?" At this point my coworker looks at me and says "Call the police please." As I'm speaking to the dispatcher 5 feet away from him he's commenting on the things I'm telling the dispatcher about his features and appearance. But he does start packing up his stuff. As we're escorting him out he says his lawyer's name and that he'll sue us for discrimination but he does eventually exit the building.
I tell a few people still at work to keep an eye out if he lingers around the building and head home. As I'm pulling into my place I get a call from my coworker asking if I'm still at the building......because the guy is still there, trying to get into the coffee shop that's on the ground floor of the building. But the baristas I told what was going down refused to let him in. Now I'm actually concerned and quickly whip it around to head back to work. But I get called again shortly thereafter saying he left in an Uber.
I enjoy the open community of entrepreneurs, creative people and dreamers my boss has created. By and large it works. But there are days when it's like.....we need to do a better job of protecting ourselves from stuff like this. We had flats for rent that are so cheap some people have tried living in them. We've had people mining crytpo off our grid. Smoking weed and worse in the building after hours. Stealing building supplies like toiletries and food for the coffee shop. The building is not in a great neighborhood, although the city is doing its damnedest to gentrify it.
I don't like the idea of rejecting people who will pay to cowork there just based on their looks or their vibe.....but man, we need to do something. Like, someone to just patrol the building and be ready to respond to stuff like this. Vet people better instead of being happy there's someone willing to pay for a flat or coworking. Something. This time it went well. But I've been there 10 years and I've dreaded the idea of someone coming into the building to break into our offices, since they're only physically secured by honestly 1 door. Our whole area is open to the building, essentially, while almost every other business has a master door that prevents everyone from getting access. We've had hoodlums and neighborhood kids come into the building to fuck around and mess with shit. People have been murdered not 5 blocks away from the building in the last few years. I get increasingly nervous that one of these days, some real shit is going to go down in the building and we're not going to be ready to handle it. This guy was clearly mentally unwell and an alcoholic. But he went peacefully. If he'd had a knife and an even more violent streak, my day could have ended very differently.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14571949 times)