Night Shift Workers Share The Weirdest Things They’ve Encountered, Here Are The 69 Best Stories

I used to work overnight at a 711 in FL. One time this guy came in literally covered in mud. At first glance I thought he had a facial deformity but it was like an inch thick of caked on mud. He tried to buy a buzz ball and fell backwards into a display and threw up. After that he kept coming in and out for like 2 hours until finally some guys came in that knew him and they finally left with him. I had a couple regulars who would come in and regularly break down talking about their lives. And then their husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends/wives who were also regulars would come in and do the same thing. They didn’t tell me I’d be doing therapy when I got hired. It was also across the street from an illegal casino and had a few times where some very [out of it] people dropped over 1k on scratch offs and didn’t win anything. I let a drunk homeless dude sleep in my car.

I was called out to a tree down during a storm years ago in the middle of the night. It was as you would imagine very windy and raining heavily.

I was driving to the location which was a fairly remote part of Scotland and not somewhere I’ve ever really seen people walk even during the day. Driving along the road I passed a woman walking in the rain pushing a pram on the opposite side of the road.

I pulled over and asked if she was okay or needed help and she just said no thank you, I’m trying to settle the baby.

Night shift casino surveillance, saw someone win a jackpot worth just under $1mil. No reaction. Just scooted over to the next machine and kept playing while staff organized the payout.

Woman 3x over the limit drove into petrol station forecourt, hitting one of the pumps, and got out like nothing had happened. She didn't even register that I was on the phone to the police.

A [man] took a container of waste oil from the back of a restaurant and threw it all over the road. Police had to cordon off the road for hours to get it cleaned up. When the newspaper delivery guy came along, he ignored the police and sped past them, skid on the oil and crashed his van.

Guy smashed a jar of sauce over his own head, walked of the shop and tried to walk in front of a bus.

I've seen it all.

I saw a mountain lion creeping through the grass fifty feet from where I was working.

I was zoning out listening to an audio book on my mp3 player in the frozen foods, changing sale signs and price labels when a clip-clopping noise caused me to look around. A skinny [bare] man in a crotchless purple fishnet bodysuit, day glo yellow 6 inch heels, a white wig, completely bedazzled frank and beans, a mini hello kitty purse, and an old manual egg beater was in the ice cream section a few freezer doors down from me. Trying to focus on matching barcode numbers and not this discoball, suddenly BAM! His sequined, sparkle package is inches from my face and they're tapping my shoulder asking if mint chip or cherry vanilla sounds better in a cone. "Both are good." That was the right answer apparently, because he looked jubilant, thanked me, and threw sugar cones and sprinkles into his cart with the ice cream and clip-clopped back to the front of the store.

I worked at the only 24 hour pharmacy in town. 


I once had a woman accuse me of making her feet bleed while shoving her feet in my face because i was sending her bad vibes. I hadn't been thinking about her at all and also her feet weren't bleeding. 


I also had people come in who were actually covered in blood and just act like everything was normal. They world just buy something and leave.  


There was also a guy who came in the middle of winter wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He passed out in the women's restroom and scared the absolute [hell] of me when i walked in because i didn't know he was in there. He woke up and walked out like nothing had happened. 

Once when I did C-Store overnights a car flew into the parking lot, door opened, and a dude was very much thrown out onto the sidewalk. Car burned rubber peeling out. Guy was *incredibly* high. I do not know what he was on, but he was very VERY out of it. Still walking around, but you'd think he was lobotomized with how out of it he was. Called the police, they took their sweet time getting there while he went around staring at various customers who showed up and other harmless but creepy things.

When the cops did show up, I found out why they weren't that concerned. This was a weekly occurrence. This guy would routinely take a ridiculous amount of [illegal substances] and his friends would abandon him at a random gas station or grocery after they couldn't stand him for the night any longer. Cops would be called, they'd put him in a cell for the night, and the cycle would repeat.

A full christmas dinner with turkey, potatoes stuffing the works. Except it was July. Chef needed to clear some freezer space up. Really nice meal but I so wanted to sleep after. Good job there was no alcohol.

Had a guy ask where the matches where, found him in that isle trying to light himself on fire.

I worked as security guard in wax figurines museum and we had glass entrance doors and some figurines that could be seen from outside...well i checked camera and there was wookie with bowcaster and everything staring inside (there was comic con or star trek convention or something).

I’m a 911 dispatcher. Used to be on the 7pm-7am shift. So…many…wild stories. The guy who intentionally shot himself in the junk? The mentally unwell lady who called us all the time just to talk and tell us what she was hallucinating at the time, except the one time she dramatically called in screaming saying that her house was on fire? And it wasn’t but we had to send half a dozen fire units to check?🤣 endless stories.

Worked McDonalds overnights. We'd have to shut everything down for like 15 to 30 mins between 3am-4am to roll over the system or whatever. One night we're all doing our shutdown tasks and after 10 minutes I walk by the first window.

Window is absolutely shattered. Someome managed to rip a support beam holding up the fence outside and i guess javelin throw? It through the window. The weird part was none of us heard it happen and there was at least 6 people working.

I get back from lunch break at 3. One time I come back into the cooler from lunch and find three of the 5 gallon waste buckets knocked over, one on its side and the eggs all over the floor, the other 2, I stg, perfectly upside-down with all 5 gallons of egg inside, like a jello mold. I couldn't get them right-side up without spilling, so unfortunately I did have to clean up 15 gallons of squashed egg. Genuinely no clue how it happened, I was the last person in the cooler before lunch and my boss checked the cameras to see if anyone else went in while I was gone, nope! Even if they some how fell off the cart they were on, I have no clue how they would have landed like that?!

This was about 10 years ago but while working night shift at a retailer we had a customer come through, go to the kitchen section and grab a knife and he ended up just cutting himself with blood all over the floor. We had out Supervisor go over and she was mortified. Ended up with the police being called over and him being taken to the hospital. Blood, just all over the floor. Janitorial was pissed.

Setting: a big box home improvement store. Activity: a major “reset” of several contiguous departments - new displays, reorienting aisles and more. Workforce: a contractor who is doing the work across multiple stores, one at a time. Contracted staff are a mix of single locations, more than one and all 19 stores involved. To prep the store for opening after five hours of reset, regular employees are being brought in at 3:00 am every night for a week.

On the fourth night, while both crews are present, a contractor on a scissor lift lowers it down, starts screaming, dismounts and starts running through the back aisles. When he runs to the front of the store, he has ripped off all of his clothes and looks like a wild man.

The store supervisor on duty evacuates his people and calls the police.

About ten minutes after cops entered the now unoccupied (but one) store, they brought him out horizontally in thick orange straps and a sheet.

Psych ward night shift many moons ago. Admission from police custody a few hours earlier, hadn't searched his belongings as we usually would as he was agitated and the police assured us he and his belongings had been fully searched. Approximately 230am this chap walked out of his room and casually laid a claw hammer on the desk, said 'I changed my mind' and walked back to bed. To this day I'm not sure if he changed his mind on hurting himself or us.

I used to work occasional overnight shifts (2200 - 0700) for support for the application service provider arm of one of the big telecom companies here in the States, back in my early career days. I'm a night person by nature, so it wasn't a big deal for me. What I'd experience was sitting in the locked support room, which was 2 pods of 8 desks, and I'd hear what sounded like a party from the 1920's or 30's (based on the music) around 0300 every time I did graveyard.

We all brought laptops back and forth, so there wasn't a ton of computer fans or equipment running (aside from my own). The first time it happened, I just assumed I was maybe half asleep. Then I'd start smelling the booze and cigarette smoke to go with it. I still dismissed it, until a coworker said something to me at a later time when we were working our regular shift. He'd worked graveyard a couple of days before and experienced that same thing and wanted to know if I had experienced it, since I was the usual volunteer to cover that shift when the permanent guy was on leave. He was pretty freaked out and didn't want to cover any more graveyards after that (he and I worked 1500 - 2300 usually).

It was closer to 2:30am

Boring night shift. Nothing happening. Everyone sitting around just chilling. And my station’s phone rings.

The call display showed a bunch of garbled characters and symbols. I answered it.

After a moment of silence, I heard it.

The ghostbusters theme.

After a few moments of confusion I called out to the rest of the crew something like “the [hell] is *this*”, and hit the speakerphone button. They all heard it and saw the display.

The song finished. And the call ended.

I used to do surgery on mice as a part of research at a hospital and once has to do a post-op around 2 AM. I went to the vivarium (where all animals are kept in different rooms) and walked in on two people doing the deed in a room full of mice :/.