Chris
Night shift. Tiny little storage cupboard. On my own. And probably the strangest hour of my life.👇 My name's Chris. I'm 41. From Manchester. Night maintenance in an office block in the city centre. Coming up on seven years there now. Night shifts are always the same. Empty floors. Bright office lights. Dead quiet. Just ventilation humming away somewhere and your own footsteps echoing down the corridor. Truth is, lately I'd started getting used to the silence. Few months back me and Sarah split up. Don't really wanna go into all that. But after that everything started piling up at once. Solicitors. New flat. Car finance. Credit cards. Bills. Money coming in was alright. Usually around £3,500 take-home. Still never seemed enough. Every month felt like I was just trying not to fall further behind. Most months I had less than £300 left in the account. And nearly £11k sat on a credit card. Didn't really talk to anyone about it. Just kept showing up for shifts. That night I was working alone. Bit after midnight I was doing the usual checks on the fifteenth floor. One of the offices had reported a damp smell near a service corridor. So I went to check the storage cupboard at the end of the hall. Tiny room. Barely 2 by 2 metres. Mops. Buckets. Cleaning supplies. Boxes of paper towels. Soon as I stepped inside — lights flickered hard. Then went out. Then the door locked behind me. Stood there a second. Tried the handle. Nothing. Emergency strip lit up dim above the shelf. A message came through from security: "Power surge — auto-lock engaged on service doors. Sit tight, tech's on the way." So that was that. Stuck in a cupboard. On my own. Barely room to sit. Turned one of the plastic buckets upside down and sat on it. Smell of bleach. Tiny cramped room. Emergency light humming above me. Phone was the only thing killing time. Messaged security back. They replied: "Might be a while, mate. Whole floor's affected." So I waited.
