As the title says, earlier tonight I found myself locked inside a local Sam's Club when the employees left and I was trapped inside a small room in the receiving area.
LOCATION: California
I work for a company that does sales sometimes inside of Sam's. I do not in any way shape or form work for Sam's/Walmart.
Anyway, the employees and floor manager were all aware that I was present and had been authorized to remain at the store after closing in order to prepare our unsold products for shipment.
I began to move my company's products on pallets to the receiving area at around 6:50 PM. Shortly before this, the floor manager through another employee informed me on behalf of the manager (he didn't have the balls apparently) that if I did not leave by 7PM I was liable to be locked inside the store. I passed along the message that I had been delayed while trying to locate pallets and shrink wrap that the Sam's Club employees were supposed to provide but I would do my best to be out the door by/before 7.
By about 7:02 PM I was hauling my last pallet to receiving and readying to leave, but I could not locate any employees by this time, it seemed to me that they had already left (I walked across the entire store and did not see anyone).
By 7:11PM I had photoed my pallets and clocked out. I went out the rear exit, but to get to this door I had to walk through a small room called the "Trucker's Lounge" which is about 7x8 ft and contrary to the name, does not contain any chairs for lounging. There was a door from the receiving area into the "Lounge" and a 2nd door that lead to the outside. I reached the exiting door and found it deabolted, but a little too late I also found that the door that would lead me back into the receiving area immediately had shut, and locked automatically.
So I found myself trapped in this small space. I called my manager immediately, they in turn tried reaching the store employees by calling the store's main number, obviously this was futile because the store had been closed over an hour. After about 20 minutes, seeing no other option, I called 911.
After being in the room about 40 minutes, I realized a big problem, there was no real ventilation, other than a small opening in the plexiglass window that lead into the receiving office. I have climbed high mountains before, one almost 11,000 ft in elevation, so I know what oxygen deprivation feels like, and I began to feel it, and it began to get severe after about 45 minutes.
Two policemen and a fire truck I was told were on the scene, but they first wanted to try and bring in the manager so they didn't have to literally break down the doors. Luckily, they were able to. In all, I was in the room about 1 hour, 7:11PM-8:11PM or so.
All this time, I was using the flashing mode on my very bright tactical light, shining it through the windows towards the interior of the store. I also was using the back end of the light to hit the metal doors, quite hard in fact. The floor manager later claimed he had checked the store thoroughly and assumed I'd left, but I feel this could not have been the case given the racket I was making and the bright light I had been shining into the store.
One of the officers has told me that can't press charges for negligence or something along those lines, that this would be a civil matter. Is this accurate? I am really curious to know what options I may have, I am not out to "sue the pants off of them" I simply want there to be a reckoning, an owning up to what happened.
THANKS ALL!
Written By: TheFlightlessDragon
Source: https://ift.tt/2JYkzNA
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