Zeta's Stories: Work SWAT Team

Content Warning: Police response, unintentional self-swatting. (No serious injuries or deaths, just a /hysterical/ amount of poor decisions and a few traumatized kids that legitimately could, and probably /should/, have died.)

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Personal disclaimer: This story appears to involve sensitive information, but actually does not, as you can find everything but the story itself on the company's website.

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So this story comes to me from a co-worker a number of years ago, and took place a year before I started at this job.

At the time, my coworker was (and later I would be) working at $defense_contractor, a defense contractor in the city of Tucson. Said contractor handles a lot of intelligence work, which is extremely highly classified! Now, if you've ever watched a movie involving a contractor out in the desert (Terminator, other random sci-fi or action movies), you've probably noticed that these places all usually have /significant/ private security contingents. There is a reason why, and that reason is that if you have a security incident at your facility, you (legally and obviously practically) need to have a serious response very very quickly, scaling with the type of incident and type of information you have at the facility. Keep in mind that intelligence information is basically protected by the highest classification that US government has, again for obvious reasons (losing a war, troops and sources being killed etc).

So, with that background, our story begins.

It is approximately 10:30PM on a Saturday night, and my coworker is coming down the stairs of $defense_contractor's office building, about to head home after some significant overtime. He pops his head out into the lobby, and sees a bunch of people running around with assault rifles with ski masks on! Freaking out completely, he slams the door, runs upstairs, and puts the entire facility into lock-down, calling 911 and everyone under the sun to come help with whatever is about to happen!

Cue one third of the police force of Tucson showing up outside the building within 15 minutes!

What my co-worker does not know at this point is that those rifles aren't actually real, nor is anyone trying to kill anyone or break in, despite the cameras showing them trying to tamper with locks. What's actually happening is that $defense_contractor only rents 4 of the 6 floors in the office building (having built out their areas to the appropriate specifications - SCIF), and there are multiple other businesses in the building, including an insurance company. Said company has a guy working for it who has a kid in highschool, and he and his friends are trying to make an action movie for class, including some filming in a commercial space. Dad has the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas, and tells his kids that they can absolutely do it in the lobby late on Saturday night when no one is around, which brings us back to current events.

Eventually, the SWAT team throws flash-bangs in, storms the lobby, and tackles everyone to the ground, scaring the everliving shit out of all of these people. Lasting trauma ensues for absolutely no good reason, especially since these fine individuals had both /removed the orange tips from their airsoft rifles/ and /were actively hunched over a lock looking like they were trying to break in for the purposes of the movie/. In what is frankly a miracle, no one was shot or otherwise injured in a serious way, though I'm sure quite a few people learned what tile floors tasted like without meaning to.

Everything immediately de-escalates, but everyone is /absolutely/ going to jail, as taking the orange tips off your fake rifles is a crime in most states, including Arizona. (Can't imagine why that would be important. Perhaps it would help prevent a situation like this?) Unfortunately, though, the incident lasts basically the entire day, since they have to clear the building room by room and everyone has to be debriefed and sign NDAs for any classified material they may have been exposed to. Utter, fucking, disaster.

Shockingly, no one was killed, but even if this guy contacted building management, and they had contacted $defense_contractor, and $defense_contractor had sent an email out, and even /if/ they had had orange tips on their rifles, this was a /shockingly bad idea/. The sheer amount of stupidity that somehow resulted in no one dying actually makes me quite unreasonably angry, as I have no idea how one makes decisions this stupid. Even if it had been a normal commercial space, this would have been a /terrible/ idea, but with $defense_contractor there, this was just horrific beyond description.

Fuck, even telling that story gets my heart rate up. XD

Zeta's Stories: Home SWAT Team

Content warning: Police interaction, concerns about bodily harm, mention of firearms. Fairly anxiety-inducing.

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So this story took place a few years ago in Tucson, when I was heading home from work. I had nearly gotten home when I turned onto the small side road that led to the house, at which point I was suddenly pinned into the center of the lane by police cars on both sides, stretching down an entire block (approximately 1 mile). Police quickly came up to my window and escorted me to my house, telling me to go inside and lock the doors and not answer for anyone who wasn't a uniformed police officer. They didn't tell me what was going on, and I'm pretty sure I forgot to even ask, but I obviously did this and hid inside, wondering if I would be less likely to be hit by stray bullets on the first or second floor, a though I'm quite sure has never crossed my mind before or since! Such was the density of the police that they ended up with an officer in my backyard, one in each side yard, and one in my front yard. There were helicopters and SWAT teams, and everything else under the sun. I have no idea what happened, but someone must've done something very very bad.

Weirdly, everything eventually quieted down and the officers just... left. The helicopters moved off to another area, probably still looking for whoever it was, and I had zero success trying to find out what had happened in the news the next day. It was super weird and unsettling. I no longer live in that house/neighborhood, but Tucson is pretty mixed as far as good and bad areas (probably a good thing since it forces us to deal with problems rather than ignoring them)... Either way... ;_;

Zeta's Stories: My Friend Lon

So I have a friend, who I love more than life itself. (I in fact have many friends like this, probably including you!) His name is Lon.

Lon is /special/. He is hysterical, and smart, and funny, and more than a little cute, but that last bit is outside of the range of our story! What is relevant is that he's absolutely, hysterically, and totally, insane!

You see, I met Lon when he was a live-in dorm tutor at my college, two years ahead of me. He helped folks out most nights (maybe every night), and could be commonly found in a large room in the basement with many many whiteboards, built specifically for this purpose.

Now, whiteboards have a common problem, and I'm sure you've all experienced this before. It goes like this:

1. Walk up to whiteboard.
2. There's no marker!
3. Oh there's one!
4. Oh no, that's dead too. Damn!

Lon, obviously sick of this like the rest of us, hits upon a solution only Lon could think of. He proceeds to buy a huge marker set in all the colors of the rainbow, and then goes to Walmart, one of the only real stores in downstate Indiana, and buys a shotgun shell bandolier! He proceeds to insert said markers into said bandolier and proceeds to wear it, using markers at will and making life much easier! (This is honestly genius???)

However, this is not the /end/ of the story! Later that year Lon was interviewing at $defense_contractor (a place I would later work, and which features in several of my other stories)... $defense_contractor is a somewhat small business (~100 employees at the time) and the CEO personally interviews every potential hire, diagramming for them the company structure and who they'd be reporting to. (Can you see where this is going? I can!) CEO proceeds to walk up to the whiteboard, and, shockingly, there's no marker! Lon opens his suit jacket, with a huge dumb smile on his face, and goes "What color would you like?"

I... I have tears of laughter crying out right now, even after telling this story 1000 times by now!

And /even better/, Lon told me this story at work, in front of another co-worker. Said co-worker had been working at $defense_contractor at the time of this now infamous event and immediately blurted out, "Wait, we /hired/ you!?!?!?!" XD

God, I love this man! XD

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Addendum: Lon is also awesome in general and would regularly do things like bring italian ice to the office, have an entire floor-standing popcorn machine inside his office, etc... I don't know what to do with this man, but I love him dearly. XD