It’s the beginning of the academic year, and the university campus is crammed with new and returning students and their families. The staff is desperately multi-tasking to keep up with enquiries, complaints, and ongoing tasks. It’s chaos, but we love it; it’s always good to see the students back.

This year, among the new students is an autistic student who had their favourite soft toy with them. Unfortunately, they lost it in the madhouse of Freshers’ Fayre and were brought into the library to decompress in a calm space. This didn’t work; they were increasingly distressed by the loss and in full meltdown. Various library staff were dispatched to look for the toy with no result.

Then, University Security arrived on the scene. Security are big chaps with full gear (body cams and all), highly professional, and very experienced in keeping the peace.

[Security Guard #1] marches up to the distressed student.

Security Guard #1: “Now then, young man. I hear you’ve had a bit of a do.”

The student goes very quiet and their eyes go wide. They obviously think they’re in big trouble.

Security Guard #1: “We hear you’ve lost your friend. Well, maybe we can find a new friend for you”

[Security Guard #2] produced from behind his back a teddy bear, complete with a gown and a mortar board. The student looked bewildered, and the staff present all burst into tears. The student wasn’t sure what to make of this, but it did calm them for a bit, long enough for a very flustered member of library staff to dash in with the original lost toy, having found it on the way to their car. (They then had to dash back off again because they needed to pick up their child from school.)

We haven’t seen the student since, but we hope they think of the library as a safe space where they’re welcome and have learned how awesome our security staff are!

I’m a zookeeper. Most people who visit the zoo are good, but we get the regular mix of visitors: people who don’t know a thing about animals, people who demand we let them into the enclosures to pet the animals, and people who are just generally entitled and rude.

On this day, we’ve temporarily drained the pool in the sea lion enclosure as part of our deep-cleaning procedure. The sea lion enclosure is open at the top to allow visitors on the zoo’s walking paths to see into the enclosure; if you’ve been to a zoo before, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The sea lions are still allowed to roam the enclosure despite the pool being drained and our work — all of our cleaning supplies are animal-friendly — and as a zookeeper, even though it’s a lot of hard work, it’s also fun because we can interact with the sea lions a lot more than we can when they’re in the filled pool.

I’m focusing on cleaning the pool walls with a scrubbing pad when I hear a slight splash near me. I look up to the top of the enclosure, and a few young boys, maybe eight or ten years old, are squirting their water bottles into the enclosure from the walkway. I call up to them in my best friendly but authoritative voice.

Me: “Hey, boys, please don’t spray water into the enclosure! We don’t want the sea lions drinking anything they’re not supposed to.”

The boys immediately apologize and stop spraying water, but then the woman with them gets involved.

Woman: *Screaming* “It’s only water! They wanted to give the sea lions something to drink since you drained their pool! Just let them have fun!”

Me: “Ma’am, the sea lions have plenty of water to drink in the inside part of their enclosure. Please tell the boys to stop spraying water.”

The woman continued screaming about how I was “just trying to ruin the boys’ day”, and then she switched to screaming about how we were abusing the sea lions by not giving them water. I heard calls for security over my walkie-talkie, so I started herding the sea lions toward their interior enclosure; many of them had already moved that way because of the woman’s screaming. Once we were all inside, I gave them some extra treats, cleaned myself up the best I could, and headed back out to see if security needed any help dealing with the woman.

The story does have a mostly positive ending. It turned out that the boys and this woman were part of an extended family group, visiting the zoo as part of their family reunion. The woman was escorted out of the zoo and banned from coming back in, but because the boys had apologized for spraying water and promised not to do anything like that again, they were allowed to remain in the zoo under the supervision of the other adults in their party.

The sea lions were fine, too. We were able to finish cleaning their enclosure without any more interruptions and get their pool refilled only slightly behind schedule.

My company has a building near the Honolulu Zoo, and there is a construction project going on right alongside us. Due to materials being stolen, the City contracted with a company that provides deployable security cameras. These cameras take the form of a large generator with a long mast coming out of the top to which multiple cameras and lights are mounted. Someone remotely monitors the cameras, and they can use a built-in PA system to shout at and threaten to call the police on people who access the space without authority. It seems, though, that the City and the company that owns the cameras don’t quite have good communication lines as the person monitoring the cameras commonly yells at the night-time construction workers. 

A few nights ago, I was standing in our parking structure and overheard this exchange. 

Tower: “This is a restricted area under surveillance. Please vacate the area immediately or HPD [Honolulu Police Department] will be called.”

The construction worker on the ground looked up at the tower. He was clearly part of the company that works in the space.

Worker: “Come on! Can’t you tell when it’s us?!”

Tower: “I have no way by which to identify individuals. Please vacate the area now!”

Worker: “We’re working tonight!”

Tower: “Please vacate the area. We are calling HPD now!”

Worker: “Are you f****** serious? We’re in uniform!”

Tower: “You have to call us if you are going to access the area outside of normal times. Vacate now!”

Worker: “It’s Wednesday f****** night!”

Tower: “VACATE!”

Worker: “Yeah? Well, vacate this!”

Tower: “HEY! What are you doing?! No! No, no, no! You can’t—”

The flashing lights, flood lights, and audio died with a comical “beeewwww” as the construction worker cut off the generator, plunging the area into both darkness and silence. 

Worker: “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE CALLING NO F****** H P F****** D NOW, MOTHERF***ER!”

Apparently, the individual in the yard was some sort of supervisor and had the key necessary to access the generator controls. The construction workers went about their business that night, and the police never showed up. Since this incident, there haven’t been any further issues, but we have noticed that the voice coming from the tower is completely different now. 

I wonder why.

It’s been a slow week at our hotel so, naturally, the night audit shift had to drum up some excitement for us.

Around midnight on December 3, a guest arrived and checked into room 312. According to Night Audit, [Guest] wasn’t in the room for more than five minutes before coming back to the desk and requesting a different one due to insects in the bathroom. No big deal; he was moved to room 404, and with new keys in hand, [Guest] went on his way.

Now, mid-morning on December 4, housekeeping comes along to talk to me.

Housekeeping: “Is room 312 going to be a stayover? The room has a ton of stuff in it, but it’s marked as ‘vacant, dirty’ on our boards.”

I check, and no one is registered to the room; the only name on our transferred rooms list is [Guest] from the night before.

So, I try to contact [Guest]. I pull up his information, and the phone number listed is invalid. No one else has been checked into the room since November 30, so I decide to lock him out so that he has to come to the desk. He eventually does, again on the night audit shift, and says no, he doesn’t have any belongings in 312, only 404. So, the night audit worker gives him a new key to 404 and waits for someone to come along asking for a key to 312.

No one ever comes.

Now, it is December 5, and there are still belongings in both rooms, with no one registered to 312. Management goes up to 312 to take a look at the stuff and… [Guest]’s name is all over everything — laptop, TSA luggage tag, Chrome Nest, military dressings, etc.

In 404, there’s still a whole set of belongings and clothes for what seems to be an entirely separate party, but [Guest] INSISTS that he is in 404. [Guest] also happens to be a local guest, living about half an hour away, so we’re all confused as to why he has a room in the first place, let alone two rooms, instead of just going home.

By this point, management thinks either this guy is going crazy or trying to scam us. (Personally, I think it’s the latter.) But why lie about something so easily disproven? When your name is literally on the stuff you claim isn’t yours? We’ve waited two days now to see if someone else had arrived and somehow never registered in the system, but no one has shown up claiming the room.

Now, if it was up to me, I would move all of the very expensive equipment and belongings out of 312 into the general manager’s office and wait for either [Guest] to freak out that someone “stole his stuff” or… well, who knows?

My general manager finally sends a message to the email on [Guest]’s reservation, and [Guest] calls back promptly. I answer.

Guest: “I am in room 312. I have not had any issues in that room, nor have I ever been in room 404!”

I transferred him to [General Manager] to hear it firsthand.

So now, we’ve changed the reservation back to room 312, and [Guest] will have to return to the desk to get his keys and show his ID.

As for the mystery individual/belongings in 404, our night audit worker couldn’t have done her job properly by IDing him last night after we locked him out. Either that or we somehow have two Mr. [Guest’s Last Name]s staying the same night, and unless they have the exact same first name, none of this should have happened at all.

So, now, there are mystery belongings in 404 with no name and no one to contact. [General Manager] is investigating everyone registered in the system to try to figure out who, if any, of them may have somehow been moved into 404 without being changed in the system.

We clearly have some issues with this night audit worker not following proper procedures for check-ins, providing new keys, or room transfers. It’s a huge safety and security risk and, unfortunately, (somehow) this isn’t the first incident.

I was doing private security for a company that did research for the Department Of Defense back in the 1980s. If you think of computer servers in vaults with built-in Faraday cages to prevent the [People from Another Country] from remotely accessing data, you are on the right line.

One night at like 3:00 am, I went to the bathroom. I knew I’d be in there for a while, and I am a reader, so when I saw this two-inch-thick manual in the trash, I picked it up and started to flip through it.

It turned out to be a proposal for a space-based anti-ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) defense system. It was an interesting bathroom read, but I suspect it was not supposed to be left in the trash like that.