Being a security guard can range from boring, tedious work to intense and exciting, depending on the day, time, and place. Sometimes after months and months of uneventfulness, a security guard will have to be ready to rock when something crazy goes down. And when things get weird...they get really weird.
Whether it's a guard with a strange inkling about a creepy van, or a country music concert that gets way out of hand, it's truly difficult for these guards to prepare for the insane situations they get thrown into. Here are some of Reddit security guards' tales of their absolute craziest day on the job! Content edited for clarity.
Never Trust Someone In A Creepy Van
“One day when I was working security at a strip mall, I saw a very creepy old van with stuffed animals in it parked in the back of the parking lot. No one was around, so I just continued on my patrol. I thought maybe it was just some weirdo with strange car decoration tastes.
Later on in the day, I saw a mother and her son shopping. No big deal, just regular folks going about their day. During the next walkthrough, I saw the same mom, without her son, looking quite upset. I had a sinking feeling and asked her if she’d lost her son. She said yes and looked at me bewildered, freaked out that I knew.
I immediately full on sprinted my fat butt to the back of the strip mall where that creepy van was. Lo and behold, I saw Mr. Creepy Van Guy and the lost son holding a stuffed animal in his hand.
As soon as he saw me, he got super defensive and said that he wasn’t doing anything. Yeah, sure buddy. He kept proclaiming his innocence as he started up his van. The mom arrived (probably followed me when I ran) and collected her son. Mr. Creepy Van Guy drove off. I didn’t stop him but I did memorize and write down his plates, which I later gave to the cops. I really wish I knew if they ever checked on that pervert.”
Don’t Ever Mess With Shawn
“I was a bouncer for 12 years at various bars in and around the Toronto area. My most memorable experience was when I was working a bar/club called Guvernment, a bar known for having significant crime and violence. One night I was working the door, checking IDs with my partner Shawn. The line was 40 or so people long. Then a group of three guys came up and tried to walk right past us.
I, being a relatively average height but generally scary looking individual, and Shawn, a 6’4″ 400lbs football player, they literally bounced off of us and then tried again to just push their way through.
We informed them that the line started down there (pointing to the end of the line), when the 5’4″ 120lbs ‘gangsta’ said, ‘Nah man, I’m clubbin’ now.’ He tried a third time, but Shawn wasn’t having any of it. He picked the guy up over his head and threw him three car lengths away, landing in a snow bank, and his two friends went rushing over to see if he was ok.
Not even 30 seconds went by and I heard POP as a .22 was fired off and hit Shawn directly in the center of his massive chest, near the heart area. Shawn went running after the guy and jumped on top of him, belly-flopping and crushing a few of his ribs, breaking his forearm, and dislocating his other shoulder (he tried to stop Shawn with both arms extended outwards).
Little did I know Shawn was wearing a vest, which saved his life, and his quick reaction saved my life as I’m sure the guy was going to fire off toward me next. The other two guys were detained by a few off-duty firefighters in the line, while the main shooter was put in cuffs and taken away in an ambulance. Needless to say, the two firefighters and their entire group drank for free that night.”
That Must’ve Been An Awkward Mess To Clean Up
“I was working security at a large festival in the UK and we were doing spot checks of people’s wristbands to catch anybody who had snuck in. After a while, you get good at spotting who is acting shifty and might not have a valid ticket. There was one couple we stopped and the girl was fine but the dude took off as soon as we asked to see his wristband. He was only wearing a pair of shorts and as soon as he had a decent bit of space from us, he ducked into a tent. We all saw him go in and this tent only had one entry, so he was stuck in there with two of us standing outside talking to him and waiting for him to give up and come out (we weren’t permitted in the tents without an invite or the police).
Suddenly he darted out of the tent and took off again…this time with no clothes on. The shock factor meant he made it past us and suddenly we were chasing a random naked guy around a campsite while calling it into control. This carried on for a few minutes until the response team arrived, meaning there were six members of security chasing a naked dude around a campsite. Eventually one of the response team guys managed to tackle him, at which point the naked dude peed on himself and the guy who just tackled him.
The other story from that concert is the guy who was being carried around duct taped to a plastic lawn chair on the shoulders of a large crowd. We watched and made sure it all seemed ok, and when they abandoned him in the middle of the main roadway through the campsite, we went to free him.
It turned out that he was naked under the tape, was happy with his situation, and wanted us to replace the tape on his mouth. We called him into control and let him be. 10 minutes later, he had a pretty much identical conversation with some bemused policemen, who also left him alone. Somebody must have freed him after my shift though, as he was gone when I came back the next morning.”
It Was The First Time His Supervisor’s Trick Actually Worked
“One time when a shoplifter was running from us and heading into a wooded area, my supervisor started barking like a dog. We couldn’t see the woman and couldn’t hear her running anymore, but we saw her tracks in the snow.
My supervisor kept barking and yelled that he was going to send the dog in after her. She screamed that she was giving up so we shouldn’t send the dog in. We got her cuffed and the whole way walking back to our office she was freaking out about how she’s afraid of dogs and to keep it away from her…she never caught on that there was no dog. My supervisor is a retired police chief and said he’s tried that stunt many times, but that was the first time it worked.”
People Will Do Anything For Pills
“I work security at a hospital and once we were having an issue with a patient for quite some time because he would show up whenever he wanted narcotics. He would legitimately eat things such as nails and razor blades so he would be admitted to a room and treated.
He was also known for taping weapons to his body and sneaking them into the hospital, so we were required to wand him every time he came in to be seen. One night when he came in after one of his stunts, the guard that was on duty didn’t do a good job wanding him. After two days of being in his room, the nurse went to check in on him and found that he was trying to cut his balls off with a razor blade that he had taped to his thigh.
Then he tried to attack the attending nurse with the blade, but she wasn’t hurt, thank God. I ended up having to put him in restraints. We’re now required to strip search him by doctors’ orders and have him on 24/7 watch when he is here as a patient.
The next time he came in to be seen, I was the lucky guy who got to strip search him. There’s nothing like telling a 360 pound, 63-year-old man to bend over and spread. I ended up finding what seemed to be a makeshift screwdriver up there…”
“Don’t Work Security At Country Concerts!”
“I worked concert security over a summer and anyone who’s done concerts will tell you that country and rap/hip-hop shows have the worst crowds. This one, in particular, was country and I was patrolling the venue with a coworker.
We ran into two other guards and wandered with them for a few minutes until we noticed two massive guys shouting at each other. When I say massive, I later found out one of them was a Marine. We decided it didn’t look like a good situation and went to calm them down.
Immediately the Marine started swinging at us and the others wrestled him to the ground. I’m 5’7 so I just pretended to help. The Marine punched one guard in the face who is known in the company to be a hothead, so he instantly pulled out his flashlight and smashed this man in the face multiple times, with blood spurting everywhere.
The only thing I distinctly remember the Marine saying was, ‘Go ahead, keep hitting me! I freaking love when you do that!’ after my coworker bashed his head in. We were all afraid my coworker was gonna be fired for that, but then the higher-ups didn’t really care after the Marine tried attacking them, too. Don’t work security at country concerts!”
He Wanted Others To Feel His Pain
“I work in a hospital and we have a lot of problems with homeless people. One day this guy came in with mental problems, got checked in, and we began testing. After all the tests were done, he discovered that he was HIV positive and totally lost it. He jumped up furiously, trying to punch everyone he saw. I tackled him down to the floor and put him in a position where he couldn’t hurt anyone. Then things went south.
He started to bite the interior of his mouth to bleed and began to spit on everyone with the intent of giving them HIV. I had a mask on so I wasn’t hit, but I couldn’t see a thing since there was blood all over my mask and shirt. As he was completely hysteric, I lost my grip on him and he sprinted away, barged through two magnetic doors that take around 2,000-3,000 pounds of pressure to open, and ran down from the 11th floor toward the exit. He ended up getting caught on the fourth floor by six agents. He had a tremendous amount of blood on his hands and left HIV positive blood everywhere in the hospital. Then he got transferred to a psychiatric hospital the day after.”
That’s What Steve Gets For Helping A Damsel In Distress
“Alright, so a couple of years ago I worked security and we were wrapping up the last night of a big outdoor country music concert. The show was over and we were in teams of two walking around with flashlights and going up to groups of stragglers and politely suggesting they finish their drinks and start to clear out.
We were talking to one big group when a couple of other teams headed over from the main gate and all but one of them were in tears of laughter. The guy who wasn’t laughing was this stocky 40-year-old guard (we’ll call him Steve) who looked ticked as heck. The first thing anyone said was, ‘Look at his shirt, look at his shirt!’ which we noticed had some unidentifiable stains on it.
We found out that right as the show finished, a very wasted young lady with a VERY low cut top came over to them, frantic and freaking out because she’d lost her phone and asked if they could help her look for it. They started searching with flashlights while she stayed with another guard nearby. Then the guard she was with noticed she had some rather fresh…liquid on her chest.
They coaxed the story out of her, and it turned out she had met a guy at the concert, started flirting, and they decided to go behind one of the tents nearby so she could give him head. The phone must have fallen out of her pocket as she knelt down, and she didn’t notice because the guy was finishing all over her chest like a true gentleman.
Well, sure enough, Steve found a pink iPhone in the grass behind a tent, showed it to her and asked, ‘Is this your phone?’ The lady was super happy that they found her phone, so what did she do? She ran right up to Steve and gave him a giant hug. At that point, his brain shut off and he just stood there stunned while the rest of the guys almost died of laughter. Then she ran off with her phone and Steve was left with second-hand stains on his black security shirt, which he ended up burning. I suggested to my boss that we send him a Christmas card with a Tide-to-go marker inside that said, ‘Thanks for sharing the load.'”
A Noise Complaint Call He Was Quite Happy To Respond To
“I was working security at a hotel that held a lot of weddings. One night, I got a call for a noise complaint. I went all the way to the back end of the property and could hear the loud music and hollering going on, so I knocked on the door and announced my presence.
The music got turned down a bit and an insanely hot twenty-something brunette answered the door. It turned out to be a bachelorette party, so I gave my congratulations and asked them nicely to turn the music down.
Then I was pulled into the room and asked if I wanted to make $100. Well, I wasn’t gonna say no. She then led me over to the main room, pulled, my pants down, bent me over her knees, and proceeded to spank me. There was a lot of laughing, hollering, and drinking going on. 10 minutes later, I walked out of there with a bridesmaid’s phone number and a crisp $100 bill.”
It Was Something Straight Out Of An Action Movie
“I was guarding a Motel 6 at midnight in a giant city in central Texas. I’d only been on shift for an hour, but I knew something weird was going on. Before I started my night, the outgoing motel employee told me he suspected the police were watching a room in the motel. That’s not really unusual as the motel is used for hooking on a nightly basis. But as my shift progressed during the first hour, my cheap Motorola radio began picking up huge amounts of interference, which is very unusual. I eventually noticed a pickup that had a middle-aged man sitting in the driver’s seat. I figured it was probably the cops, so I pretended not to see them.
At 12:15, I was standing in the lobby drinking some coffee when the phone rang and the night auditor answered. When she hung up, she told me that the police were on the way to apprehend someone at the hotel. I figured that meant a few squad cars, at most, were going to arrive.
Holy crap was I wrong. Within two minutes, four police cars, two ambulances, an unmarked car screeched into the parking lot. The best part was the six-man tactical team hanging off a modified F-350 truck. Within seconds, the team was moving up the stairs in the most cinematic way imaginable.
The team stacked up at the door, smashed a flashbang through the window (which exploded, causing the building’s fire alarm to activate), and broke down the door with a battering ram. After a few minutes, they dragged a guy and his girlfriend out.
After a bit, a detective brought arrest and search warrants up to the office and a form to be compensated for the damages. But get this: the guy they arrested had violated his parole. What was he paroled for?!
On top of all that, they didn’t arrest the girl and she didn’t have her name on the room. As a result, I had to go kick her out of the room. She was crying when I told her, and she just picked up her scattered belongings and carried them out. It was an unreal ordeal all around.”
Quite The Way To Start A New Job!
“My first day working a retail security job, I showed up a few minutes early and witnessed a man dressed in the company’s uniform getting tossed into the back of a police car by about four officers. He was freaking out, struggling against them, screaming at the top of his lungs, and was one very, very small step away from getting hit with a stun taser or pepper spray. To this day, I’m amazed at their restraint.
After getting inside, I discovered that he was the previous security guy and that they had coordinated his arrest with the start of my shift. Per my new boss: ‘It wasn’t because we wanted to scare you, we just didn’t want a gap in coverage.’
It turned out the guy had made off with something in the vicinity of $25k worth of goods over the previous couple of months and only got caught because he was stupid and greedy.”
Rihanna Must’ve Been Real Hungry
“I work security at a private airport and we get a lot of big-time stars that come in. Well, one night around 3 am, I was at my post which is pretty secluded from the rest of the terminal and I heard a bang on my shack. I figured it was my partners messing around with me so I ignored it.
30 seconds later, I noticed some guy stumbling around the parking lot scooping stuff up off the ground. I went out and asked if I could help him, and he just yelled back at me that he was running late and NEEDED to get food to Rihanna so I helped him scoop up the last of the food off the ground (gravel included.)
As the man hurried off to give Rihanna her food, I noticed he had a large gash on his head and was bleeding profusely. I attempted to give him a paper towel but he insisted he was fine. A couple of minutes after the man left, still bloodied, Rihanna arrived and I nearly got a contact high from being near her limo.”
The Guy Was Trying To Get Sauced
“I work food service in an amusement park. One day, a guy snuck in the back of the store and stole a box of BBQ sauce packets thinking it was a box of Franzia, which was kind of strange considering that we didn’t sell Franzia and that it clearly said BBQ sauce on just about every surface.
When a security guard (who I happened to be friends with) caught up with him, not only did he deny he did anything (while still holding the box), but he peed and pooped himself. The good news was that we got our sauce back and he got a yearlong ban from the park, plus public intoxication charges!”
This Security Force Sounds Pretty Corrupt
“I worked with a guy who was the company’s dealer, which is to say he sold stuff to the entire guard company. One of the tenants at the building we worked saw him making a transaction with one of the senior guards and threatened to report him to the company.
The dealer guard asked me for help in dealing with the problem and I said I wasn’t going near it with a 40-foot pole. If If I’d known exactly what he wanted ‘help’ with, I’d have done something about it.
He waited until I was off shift, then he and another coworker that he sold to ambushed the tenant in a stairwell, duct-taped his mouth shut, tied his hands to the railing, and beat the ever-loving crap out of him. They told him if he went to anyone about it, they’d do worse. The guy did not end up reporting him for dealing, surprisingly enough.”
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