I have spent many years in the janitorial industry. There have been some funny stories through the years.

One time I was cleaning a three story office building where they published a local classifieds newspaper. I entered the building and locked the door behind me. I turned off the alarm of course also. I had a custom of starting from the third floor and working my way down.

I would take about a half hour to get things cleaned up on the third floor. Then before I would mop the floor I would take the trash all the way down to the ground floor and put it by the door. When I got down to the door I discovered it was opened.

Now this was very odd since I locked it 30 minutes earlier. I went up to the second floor to see if anyone had come in that worked there. Then I thought you know this is kind of stupid. It’s late at night and if an intruder came in instead of an employee, I am putting myself in a compromising position. And I basically ruled out an employee being since I was yelling “hello anyone in here” like a lunatic for about two to three minutes as I covered the second floor.

Just as dumb, I suddenly remember I didn’t re-lock the door. So I went back down stairs and pushed the door closed. Then I made a call to the local police. I explained my concern and made it clear I was pretty certain everything was fine but if they had a minute I would appreciate them checking it out.

In a couple minutes two officers arrived. I let them in and gave them the rundown. They agreed it was probably wise to be sure. So I took one of them around the third floor while the other officer remained at the door. This was in case someone decided to make a run for it when they saw the police arrive.

Then I took both of them up to the second floor and finally the third floor. We opened every closet and looked in every potential hiding place. Then all of the sudden a light bulb went off in my thick skull. “There is something wrong here”.

You see all this time they had their guns drawn and walked around the office pointing them. The odd part was they followed behind me the whole time! There we were for example coming up on a closet and they would stand back with their weapons aimed toward the closet as I walked up to the closet and opened the door. Every where we walked I led the search.

So as we reached the end of the “tour” we were about to search one last office. As were passing a glass window I saw the reflection of the three of us. Now mind you I turned around plenty of times as we poked and prodded all over the office. I stared down the intense eyes of the officers and saw the two pistols pointing in my general direction. But it wasn’t until I saw the perspective of them following me with pointed guns that reality hit me.

So I abruptly stopped and turned. Which wasn’t exactly a good idea because I got them a little jumpy. Especially one of the guys. He aimed right at me out of reflex and then caught himself and yelled “don’t do that!”

So I said back “okay take it easy there tiger, but aren’t we doing this backwards? I mean I can take care of myself but if someone were actually here I would have been in between you and your guns and them. That is a bit unsettling now that I give it a thought. Especially the between and gun part.”

Then we all looked at each other and laughed. The two officers apologized for not handling it differently and they entered the last office without me. No one was in there of course. The most exhaustive search before the search for Osama bin Laden was over.

I found out later that the circulation manager had come in for few minutes and left while I was upstairs. So someone was in the building.

Funny ending to all this was that one of the officers started coming by that office whenever I was there and we became really good friends. And he always brought donuts if you can believe that.