John Rabbit
Banned
This is a long story but only because something like this has never happened to me before and it's just been on my mind all day.
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So it's about 8:10 in the morning and I'm in the 2nd bathroom of our apartment so as not to wake up my wife. I hear what sounds like a lot of movement/noise coming from just above/beyond our front door/porch (we live in a two-story apartment building with exterior entrances). I wasn't immediately suspicious as our upstairs neighbors have a young boy and they often make some commotion in the morning as they're getting ready to leave.
I finish up and leave the bathroom and the noise is louder and sounds like it's right outside of my front door (the 2nd bathroom I was using is closer to the front of the apartment than the master bed/bath). It has kind of a...purposeful? sound to it. Not like the random noise from neighbors stomping/moving around; more like somebody is deliberately moving/dragging/manipulating something. I go to the door and look through the peep hole to see if somebody's moving furniture or something. All I can see is what looks like a person standing very close to my door wearing a pillowcase or some kind of bag/garment over their head. They're talking in a low voice to somebody else I can't see and now I hear noise coming from outside the wall of the 2nd bedroom (which is immediately next to the front door/landing. At this point I become convinced we're about to be broken into/robbed.
I start fumbling with my phone trying to unlock it to call the police and make for the master bedroom. I decide instead of fumbling with my phone to wake my wife up, tell her to immediately call the police, and go into our closet where I keep a .38 special in a safe. I get the gun, tell her not to leave the bedroom and head back to the front door with the intention of announcing that I'm calling the police and that I have a gun.
As I get to the door I look again to see if they're still there and I see the same person as before, but standing next to/behind him is the maintenance guy for the property. Wtf? So I bang on the door and ask what the hell they're doing. They kind of jump and tell me they're working on my porch light, as the other lights in the units next to mine weren't receiving power and they wanted to see why ours was the only one still working. I undo the chain on the door and look to see why someone has a pillowcase over their head.
Turns out the guy actually working on the light was standing on a stepladder and was so close to my door that I was seeing the side of his sleeve/shirt. Mind you I was about 5 minutes removed from sleep so I probably wasn't at my sharpest. I'm standing there in my underwear holding a gun and just kind of...stunned. I tell them they absolutely scared the shit out of me and that next time, even if it's early, to please knock and announce their presence. At no point did I aim the gun at them or the door, and I had zero intent to shoot (I just wanted to scare what I thought were burglars) but goddamn what are they thinking making that kind of noise at 8am without telling us about it?
I don't consider myself a paranoid person by any means, but I do have a basic alarm system in the apartment and lately there has been a rash of robberies and gun-related crimes in my otherwise pretty mundane neighborhood/community. I have zero doubt those aspects were playing on my sleepy mind, but for about a good 20-30 seconds I was absolutely convinced we were going to be victims of a home invasion. I'm still just kind of...freaked out about it, several hours later.
Has anything like this happened to someone? Does anyone think I overreacted? I didn't yell at them (other than asking what they were doing) and didn't brandish the weapon toward them (I don't even think they saw it as I kept it lowered and kind of behind me the whole time).
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TL;DR - Thought I was going to be home invaded, turned out to be maintenance workers tearing apart my porch light at 8am completely unannounced.
--
So it's about 8:10 in the morning and I'm in the 2nd bathroom of our apartment so as not to wake up my wife. I hear what sounds like a lot of movement/noise coming from just above/beyond our front door/porch (we live in a two-story apartment building with exterior entrances). I wasn't immediately suspicious as our upstairs neighbors have a young boy and they often make some commotion in the morning as they're getting ready to leave.
I finish up and leave the bathroom and the noise is louder and sounds like it's right outside of my front door (the 2nd bathroom I was using is closer to the front of the apartment than the master bed/bath). It has kind of a...purposeful? sound to it. Not like the random noise from neighbors stomping/moving around; more like somebody is deliberately moving/dragging/manipulating something. I go to the door and look through the peep hole to see if somebody's moving furniture or something. All I can see is what looks like a person standing very close to my door wearing a pillowcase or some kind of bag/garment over their head. They're talking in a low voice to somebody else I can't see and now I hear noise coming from outside the wall of the 2nd bedroom (which is immediately next to the front door/landing. At this point I become convinced we're about to be broken into/robbed.
I start fumbling with my phone trying to unlock it to call the police and make for the master bedroom. I decide instead of fumbling with my phone to wake my wife up, tell her to immediately call the police, and go into our closet where I keep a .38 special in a safe. I get the gun, tell her not to leave the bedroom and head back to the front door with the intention of announcing that I'm calling the police and that I have a gun.
As I get to the door I look again to see if they're still there and I see the same person as before, but standing next to/behind him is the maintenance guy for the property. Wtf? So I bang on the door and ask what the hell they're doing. They kind of jump and tell me they're working on my porch light, as the other lights in the units next to mine weren't receiving power and they wanted to see why ours was the only one still working. I undo the chain on the door and look to see why someone has a pillowcase over their head.
Turns out the guy actually working on the light was standing on a stepladder and was so close to my door that I was seeing the side of his sleeve/shirt. Mind you I was about 5 minutes removed from sleep so I probably wasn't at my sharpest. I'm standing there in my underwear holding a gun and just kind of...stunned. I tell them they absolutely scared the shit out of me and that next time, even if it's early, to please knock and announce their presence. At no point did I aim the gun at them or the door, and I had zero intent to shoot (I just wanted to scare what I thought were burglars) but goddamn what are they thinking making that kind of noise at 8am without telling us about it?
I don't consider myself a paranoid person by any means, but I do have a basic alarm system in the apartment and lately there has been a rash of robberies and gun-related crimes in my otherwise pretty mundane neighborhood/community. I have zero doubt those aspects were playing on my sleepy mind, but for about a good 20-30 seconds I was absolutely convinced we were going to be victims of a home invasion. I'm still just kind of...freaked out about it, several hours later.
Has anything like this happened to someone? Does anyone think I overreacted? I didn't yell at them (other than asking what they were doing) and didn't brandish the weapon toward them (I don't even think they saw it as I kept it lowered and kind of behind me the whole time).
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TL;DR - Thought I was going to be home invaded, turned out to be maintenance workers tearing apart my porch light at 8am completely unannounced.