I Got 99 Problems, And… We Should Really Get Out Of Here

About ten years ago, I worked in a nursing home. The building was old and while we waited for the new build to start, there wasn’t much money spent on repairs. Needless to say, the old building had some “problems.”

Problem 1: I was working with an intern who had just started. She was unaware of some of the issues we had to deal within the building. She and I walked into a small room where a resident was sleeping. She had thrown up and the room was really smelly. While I grabbed towels and water, the intern tried to open the window. 

When I realised this I yelled, “NO, DON’T! It’ll…”

Then, there was an almighty crash and the sound of glass breaking into thousands of pieces. The intern was standing near the space where the window was, still holding on to the latch.

“…fall out,” I finished.

The window wasn’t to be opened anymore, as staff knew the hinges were so rusted the window would drop out. It had to be replaced, as it was a tad cold in a bedroom without a window. But the smell was gone!

Problem 2: I was working the nightshift and doing my rounds. I was just walking along the third floor hallway when I suddenly heard the elevator arriving. The doors opened and I had a serious jumpscare, as the elevator should stay on the ground floor with the doors open all night. Nobody was supposed to use the elevator at night.

The doors opened and I could see nobody in the elevator at all. The doors closed and I heard it travelling up to the top floor where it opened again and closed. It then went down again and opened and closed again. This apparently happened every night around 3:00 am. The elevator would travel up and stop at every floor, and when it reached the top floor it would travel down, again stopping at every floor. Nobody knew why, not even the technicians who had been called a couple of times, but they couldn’t locate the problem. We called it the elevator ghost.

Problem 3: One wing had sunscreens which were all attached to each other. That is, there was only one button which controlled all sunscreens on that wing. If you wanted to pull them out — or in — you needed to look outside first to see if anyone had their door open. If so, it needed to be closed first. One of my coworkers forgot to check and took out two doors. Both got torn from the hinges and had to be fixed. The boss wasn’t best pleased.

Problem 4: We were having a fire drill and one of our residents had to be “evacuated” from his room. As the “fire” was further down the hall, we got him to the top of the hall, only to realise the evacuation chair was missing. Someone thought it wasn’t needed and had had it removed. As it was a drill, we joked with the resident — a relatively young guy — about throwing him off the stairs. The fire department just carried him down, but a new chair was needed in order to pass the drill.

There are quite a few more stories; some deserve their own story completely.

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