Alarming Stories
Alarming Stories II Part 2 - Enjoy a few snippets from my book below
Hero worship
In another incident, driving to Darlington, I turned off the A1 and on to the A66, a short way down the road a police motorcycle pulled me up and gave me a ticket for speeding.
The ticket recorded 98MPH, however, the Escort 1.3L with just 68hp was not capable of that speed, to add to this, I had a huge rack, two large triple extension ladders and a pair of steps fastened to the roof.
I was going to challenge the ticket, on the grounds my car could not reach the speed claimed, however when I mentioned it to the other engineers, I received hero worship for achieving such a high speed in the car provided.
Sex in the office
CCTV as far as some were concerned did have its downsides, following an installation in an office in Nottingham, it was discovered that some damage had occurred to some items just delivered that day, the management team wanted to discover who was responsible, but could not work the recorder playback.
I was called out to assist, and between myself and the manager we ran through the days recording, the boxes that had been delivered were simply piled on a desk and one of the cameras could make out the desk in the distance, the time and date generator reached 5:00 which was the closing time for the office without incident.
We continued to watch, the lights went out and we presumed all had left for home, however some two hours later, the lights came back on, a man and a woman entered the office, walked over to the desk where the parcels were and stripped, climbing on top of the parcels they proceeded to have sex.
The man in the recording was a senior employee who had keys to the building, the woman, it was assumed at the time was a stranger picked up for sex, possibly at the pub, however she was later identified as his secretary.
The manager was gobsmacked, he could not take his eyes off the screen. I understand the man in the video and his secretary were both dismissed for gross misconduct.
A clean getaway
I was servicing an alarm in Bradford when a call from a national account customer, Jet filling stations, came in, the site was local in Bradford so I drove directly and arrived to see the police crime scene unit on site.
It would seem that the alarm had activated in the middle of the night, the police had attended the filling station and with no sign of a break in, they had left. It had taken the control room some five hours to contact a keyholder who had arrived at seven AM as the premises opened for the day.
All the cigarettes and pre-paid phone cards had been stolen, despite the police who attended stating it was a false alarm and the premises was secure?
The front door was a typical aluminium swing door with a top and bottom pane of clear glass, the bottom pane was completely missing. Around the back of the building amongst scrub and bushes there was a plastic brush and dustpan set along with a lot of broken glass.
The police put two and two together and came up with an answer, the intruders activated the alarm when the broke the glass, they then cleaned up the glass and hid it with the brush etc. until the police arrived and left. Then they could take their time and empty the station of anything of value.
You could say that they got clean away!
There was an enquiry by Jet into the circumstances of this robbery, the police did not fare well from the incident.
Call out from hell
Jim said, it was last Friday and almost five o’clock, he was just reaching over to the phone to flick it on to night service, when it rang. Like a fool he picked the phone up, on the other end of the line was a distraught lady.
Is that Security Centres she asked, he said it was and she went on to say that her new alarm installation had been completed half an hour ago, then through tears and sobbing she said, you will have to come and see what your engineers have done.
He went on to say that the company has been using sub-contractors so anything could have happened. At this point, he had everyone in the room’s attention, where was she, asked one.
Jim replied only in the Lake District of course, a four-hour drive at this time of day on a Friday. Did she say what the problem was, asked another engineer, no she would not say on the phone, she insisted I drive to her house where she would show me the problem.
He set off to drive from central Manchester to Workington in rush hour. He explained that he could not stop thinking about what he was going to see, was the house flooded, or even on fire.
Finally he arrived after a stop off for food on the motorway, it was almost 10:00pm, the lady he had spoken to answered the door and he told her he was Jim, a supervisor from the alarm company and showed her ID.
At this she asked him inside and ushered him into the downstairs loo. Look she said in a distraught voice. Look what your engineers have done.
At this point you could have heard a pin drop in the room, all were intently focussed on Jim waiting to know what the engineers had done, one could no longer wait, so what had they done? he asked. Jim, with a twinkle in his eye replied, there was a floater in the toilet.
The whole room gasped, is that all one said, another asked so she wanted you to drive all the way from here to flush her toilet, another gasped, when another made himself heard. What did you do Jim, flush it, and charge her for a reset? At which point the room descended into chaotic laughter and disbelief.
British Rail Network Southeast
Finally on week four, we got our possession, and in two nights we completed Willesden, then moved on to Harlesden, the monitors, crane and housings along with the bracket had been delivered that Monday, se we arrived at tea time on Wednesday and prepared them for that evening.
The lookouts arrived a bit early and the railway supervisor was already on site, the station was closed and in complete darkness and we had everything waiting to go, trestles, bracket, monitors, crane, housings, lights and generator.
One of the lookouts shone a torch in our direction and beckoned for us to join him and his mate. Walking up the platform the lookout held his finger to his mouth to indicate we should be quiet, arriving next to him we noticed that there was a light on in a window of a property overlooking the end of the platform.
In the window was a lady washing up with no top on. We all stood and watched for a few minutes, when one of the lookouts coughed, she could not see us but was now aware we were there, so she dropped the blind, one guy whistled loudly as we hit the lookout who had coughed.
Philip Wilkinson
I am currently the owner and Managing Director of a security devices distribution company. Online Security Products Limited. We offer a range of parts, everything from CCTV to Door Entry, Access Control and Intruder.
