As a field service technician, I have met a lot of different people and gone into many strange places. However, after meeting so many people you seem to get a sixth sense when thing are not right. This is one of those stories.

It was a bright beautiful summer day. It was the type of day that makes any service tech appreciate that they’re not sitting behind a desk. It was a busy day with about 20 service calls between three techs. We each grabbed the service calls we wanted and headed out for the day. A little after lunch time, I was traveling to my next customer site when I received a call from my coworker. This wasn’t normal. We normally never called each other so I found this to be odd. I answer the phone and I hear my coworker whispering into the phone but can’t make out what he said. I immediately ask him why he was whispering and to speak up. That’s when he described the situation that he was in.

He started by saying he couldn’t talk very loudly because someone was watching him from only 10 to 15 feet away. He cuts directly to the point. He said I am currently at the personal address listed on service call XXXXXXX. He repeats himself but wants me to write down the address and ticket number. So, I wrote down the information as directed and before I could ask why I was writing this information down he tells me that if I don’t hear from him in exactly 30 minutes to call the police. I asked him what for? He told me the guy watching him is giving him the creepies. My coworker proceeds to tell me that he is pretending to look for something in his car just, so he could make this phone call. He said he can’t get into details because the guy is starring at him from the porch. He ends the call abruptly with “just remember what I said”.

Less than 10 minutes later, I receive a call back from my coworker. He seems out of breath and in a hurry to get his car started. I could tell he was raddled when he told me that he was ok. I started to ask more details on what happened. He tells me that once he entered the person’s house there was only a single male present. All the windows were covered over to keep anyone from looking in or out. The room was very dark and dirty. When my coworker asked where the equipment was located the customer replied it was in the basement. My coworker told the customer to lead the way. My coworker was following the customer but once they reached the top of the steps leading to the basement something didn’t feel right. My coworker told me that the customer insisted that he go down the steps first. The customer insisted multiple times, but my coworker did not want to go down the steps first. He said it looked very creepy. There wasn’t any lights and he found it very odd how the customer kept wanting him to go down the steps first, so he thought fast and pretended that he forgot something in his car. That is when he called me. My coworker told me that after calling me he went back in and was lead down to the basement where the customer pointed him to the hardware. Even after getting pointed to the hardware the customer was acting strange. My coworker didn’t want to turn his back on the customer, but it seemed like the customer was trying to get him to turn his back. My coworker fixed the problem in record time. Then made his way out of the house as fast as possible.

Makes you wonder what would have happened if he went down the basement stairs first.