Ah, paranoia

Working third shift and not getting enough sleep can start messing with your mind.

Last night I made the long trek to the bathroom at the 1:15 AM break. I noticed the door on the handicap stall was closed and latched. There were a few second shift straglers in that area of the warehouse who were working overtime, so I figured it was one of them.

At the 3:00 AM break I made the long bathroom trek once again. The door on the handicap stall was shut again. Or perhaps still shut. Could someone have been in there for that long, or is the door simply shut? I listened carefully and heard a brief creaking sound. Usually if someone else's is in the bathroom there's no doubt in my mind, but I wasn't sure if there was anyone in there or not.

I ended up leaving the bathroom and making the very long walk back up to the front of the warehouse where there's another set of bathrooms. While I was walking up to the front I wondered if there was someone actually in the stall, and if there was, who it was and why they were in there. On third shift past 2:00 AM there's only two men other than me in the building, and one of them is a security guard. If someone was in there I doubted it was either of the other two guys that are on third shift. Maybe someone from second shift was sleeping in there for some reason. Or maybe they were hiding. Should I tell the guard? If I told and whoever was in there got in trouble then I could be at risk of retaliation if the person got in trouble for hiding in the stall instead of working. But what if there was someone in there with a gun or a chainsaw or something?

After I left the other bathroom up front, I decided to go ahead and tell the security guard and risk looking like either a rat or a chicken. So I told what I knew to the guard. He said the other guy on this shift was outside smoking, but he got up and checked to make sure. We both then went back to the bathroom. I let the security guard check the stall because, after all, he's the security guard, not me. Naturally there was no one in the stall and I felt like an idiot, but the guard told me that I was right to tell him because someone may have passed out in there. He didn't seem annoyed at having to get up from his chair at all. But he was probably thinking, "What a little sissy girl!" I know I'm a little sissy girl, but I don't like other people to know it. Better a little sissy girl with a wide paranoid streak than the first victim in the great warehouse chainsaw massacre.