It's kind of sad that the world has come to this, but here we are. Usually, a good joke can defuse a stressful situation. It's far less common for one to ignite a tense stand-off.
But that's exactly what happened at a Home Depot when a decent line got taken and translated the wrong way. At least it had a happy ending!
According to The Wichita Eagle, an employee was in the men's room when a customer walked out of a stall and told him that "Somebody told me there's a bomb in the building, you need to leave the building."
But the customer repeated the statement three times so, given the world we live in in 2019, the employee decided to take him seriously and at face value, which is usually for the best where words like "bomb" and "leave the building" are concerned.
"We just had a customer here make what may have been a bomb threat," the security guard told dispatchers. "He said, uh, somebody told me there's a bomb in here and you need to leave the building. He said it three times."
People have called the emergency line over things like a cable outage during a dramatic moment in Breaking Bad, for having coupons rejected at a restaurant, or for help finding their garage door opener.
So, for a bomb threat, of course they were going to dispatch police.
The employee had recognized the customer as a regular, and they were able to contact him on the phone.
He told the police officer "that he had no intention of causing such alarm, and that the comment he said...was meant to be funny."
Yeah, it was all a joke from a guy in an urgent need to use the bathroom. We've all been there, right? Honestly, it's a decent line — it just didn't translate well.
Apparently, the customer told the police officer that he understood the joke and was trying to be funny when passing the warning along, without much success.
