Thursday, November 7, 2013

Construction Worker

As a call center worker of three years, I have been guilty of what others might call "call center hopping" This story takes place during my work for my third call center in Davao. Callbox is located in the Landco Building which has been known for its ghost stories.
During breaks, we like to hang out in the fire exit. Most of my friends and co workers sneak out there to smoke cigarettes and we normally enjoy a good laugh about clients in there. One night, we were noisier than usual and having taken our usual spot on the base of a set of stairs facing the fire exit door, which was halfway open at that time. That door opened into a dimly lit corridor which had a dead end. Given that this was 2 in the morning, we didn't expect anyone to be there. My friends and I were discussing the recent elevator scare that left one of my co-workers going up and down from the second floor to the seventeenth floor and upon reaching the 17th floor the elevator would go on a free fall and stop on the second floor and start its climb again, we discussed his scary ride which lasted for 45 minutes. What was weird about this was that building engineers checked the elevator and there was nothing wrong with it. 

My co worker threatened to sue the building but they still stood by their findings that nothing was wrong with the equipment. Our discussion became noisier than usual and I who was positioned beside the half open door, noticed movement. I looked just in time to see a man splattered in what I thought was paint glide by. It took me half a minute to step out of the door and into the corridor, again just in time to see the man disappear into the wall. No one but me saw it, so I rejoined my group and said to my friends that it was getting late and we should return to our stations. They agreed and we headed up. 


We were at the fire exit on the 8th floor and headed back to the 9th were our production floor was located. When I reached the 9th floor, I went directly to the guard who was employed in the building for 12 years, I asked him quietly, "what happened here"? He said, did you see it too? I said, stop playing games and tell the truth. The guard pulled out a tiny pouch from his neck and said he got this specifically to ward off the "spirits" who were trying to harm him at night during his rounds. He told me a story that made the hair on my arms stand.

He recounted that when the building was being constructed; a worker fell off his scaffold on the 10th floor and landed on the 8th. He said that the worker crawled up the fire exit looking for his colleagues and died on the 9th floor trying to find the others. Looking back, I always thought what I saw splattered on the man was maroon paint, now I knew better. I went back to work and spluttered something about seeing a man... The girl seated a seat away from me heard me and said, Oh you saw him too? That "dirty man" just walks by the pantry on the tenth floor when I'm there by myself she told me.

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