Sometimes when you work in tech support, you need to come in after hours to do upgrades or fix a problem.

When the support guy in this story was working overnight at a school, the police mistook him for a vandal and approached him, gun drawn.

Not surprisingly, he was terrified of the experience, but once things got figured out, both he and the officer laughed at the event.

Late-night visit from police while volunteering

Many years ago, in 2003, I was volunteering at a small school where I provided IT help and support.

This is a great job early in a career.

Ordinarily things like setting up PCs and so on.

One night I was working late in the computer labs upgrading their already-ancient PCs to Windows XP, but I didn’t think anything of it being the middle of the night, I just wanted to get it done, and things were moving slowly.

It is good that the police are keeping an eye on things.

This school was also in a rural area of the US. The town’s police department had a good relationship with the school and their officers would routinely drive by during their shifts just to keep a caring eye on the building, grounds, and campus.

It must have been pretty unusual for them to see a truck parked under the awning at the main entrance late at night, so an officer got out and began looking around, walking the building’s exterior and shining his flashlight in various windows.

I bet it isn’t that uncommon for kids to break into a school.

He must have thought someone broke in and was preparing to loot the place.

Imagine my shock when he makes his way to the computer lab windows, shines his light, sees me, and taps on the glass!

I hope he brought a change of pants.

I jumped about ten feet in the air before hands-up waving at him, saying “I’m just the computer guy!”

I ran outside. The cop was good natured, and once I showed him my keys (and verified they actually opened the building) he and I both chuckled and I spent the next hour completely pumped on adrenaline from the scare!

He got the energy needed to power through the night.

I did finish the upgrade though.

This would have been terrifying, but it does make for a great story after the fact.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this story.

This happens a lot about.

It really can.

He was set up to be scared.

This would be terrifying.

Everybody just needs to calm down a bit, right?

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.