It is just 8:30 a.m. when I begin my day at the office. Two other staff members are already busy working at their desks when we hear a strange banging noise coming from the stairwell of our building. We all stop and look at each other puzzled by the noise that is getting louder. It sounds like metal on metal. It is the sound of a pipe being banged on the handrails by someone approaching our office. He is in our office before we realize who it is or what is happening.

Just the day before, this same mentally disturbed man arrived at our office insisting that we had rented him an apartment. He was talking in circles and making us all uncomfortable. He was also using our telephone to call long distance.  When I asked him to hang up the phone, he became confrontational, called me every name in the book, and then left. I thought that was the end of it.   This happens. People of all kinds come in just to sit in our comfortable air conditioning and drink our coffee. Sometimes we have to escort them out.

But this fellow returned the next morning wearing a hospital gown and carrying a three-foot-long metal pipe. I immediately ran to my phone and called 911. Our receptionist did her best to keep him calm by engaging him in quiet conversation while we waited for the police. Unfortunately, he soon became agitated again and demanded to know when he could move into the apartment that we had promised him. I approached him and told him that we did not have an apartment for him and that he would have to leave. It was then that he told me that he was going to “bash in my head.”

After another outburst of profanities in my face, he stormed out of the office and toward one of our company trucks. I thought he was going to smash the windows with his pipe.  But he apparently thought better of that as well as the police showed up.

The police were very familiar with him as they have arrested him before for hitting another woman, threatening kids, and other bizarre behavior. He is currently being evicted. The police tell me he is a vet who is routinely treated at a nearby military hospital and released as soon as he calms down.

He is in jail now charged with terroristic threatening for this incident. His bail is $100. That’s right. $100. Ridiculous.

My office is now on a “knock to enter” system because we don’t know if he’s going to come back again.

I have had to deal with angry people before. Tenants who threaten violence because they didn’t get their way about something. I understand them. I understand what they are mad about. I know how to talk to them and to somewhat anticipate their behavior. This is different. I don’t know this person. He is a complete stranger that hates me for no reason whatsoever. That is frightening.