I had a weird work incident yesterday. It involved a car crash (not me), internet outage, and me going home early from work.
I got into work late morning, then worked through normal lunch time. I finally decided I needed to eat, so I got up and told my boss that I was headed out for lunch. A moment later, as I was walking toward the office door, there was a loud noise and the power flickered out for a moment, less than a second then came back on. The loud noise I heard was kind of a shaking like when big trucks go by sometimes. My boss said something like “That didn’t sound good”.
When I got outside, I saw some people, including some guys from the game store downstairs, looking across the parking lot toward the lot behind the building that I couldn’t see from there. As I walked forward, they were slowly moving toward what they were looking at. I felt a little weird going toward my car in the lot while they were looking at whatever, but I continued.
When I finally got to where I could see it, there was a little red hatchback up against a metal box at the bottom of an electric pole. It was pointed backward compared to the one way street near it, but the pole was basically between an alley and a parking lot, with the sidewalk, then the street on one side. I’m not sure how it happened, but they could’ve been parking in the lot or going the wrong way on the street and panicked or something.
Somebody was yelling along the lines of “Get out of the car” and “Don’t touch anything metal”. I thought it was the game shop guys at first, but then I looked up and say a guy yelling from the roof. I kinda walked toward the car, unsure if someone was still inside it. Two young looking people came out the other side. When I determined that there was no one else inside, I went back toward my car. A woman who had walked that way asked if anyone had called the police, then said she would and went off. The one game store guy made a comment like “That’s not good”.
I got in my car and headed off to lunch. Aladdin’s, chicken len-chili with cheddar. It was good. Ate outside, was a bit windy. Service was a bit slow, or felt that way as I wanted to get back to find out more details.
When I got back on looked behind the building, the red car was still there but moved a bit away from the pole. It looked like the front left corner was a bit messed up, maybe mostly the body, maybe the wheel. There was police tape across the alley and a police car or two by the scene. One or two big Ohio Edison trucks were there doing something with the pole or wires. A tow truck was leaving on the one alley, without the car.
I went into the office. My boss said the internet had gone out soon after I left and would be out likely for another couple hours. I told him about the car hitting the pole and he said that was what did it. I worked through my phone’s internet for a bit, but didn’t want to do too much using up my data. Also, my back was hurting more than usual. So I left for home, where I’d have my “unlimited” data. Things looked the same with the car situation as I headed out.