T1B

About 15 years ago I was contracted to do a job for a week, Monday through Friday. I was assigned to update and upgrade the electrical system at a hotel.

When I arrived on Monday morning, I found out that just the week prior, the duct work and heating and cooling systems had been upgraded. The work was supposed to be finished by the time I began my work on Monday, but it was not 100% complete. So the worker, a man named Brody, was still going to be putting the finishing touches on some things at the hotel on that Monday morning.

I saw Brody as soon as I came into the hotel. He was a big man -- tall and full. Red cheeks and a large smile. He greeted me happily. "Hi, partner," he said to me. Nobody has ever really called me "partner" before.I greeted him back. Just a normal "Hello," I gave him.

Brody was drinking a can of soda. Orange soda. He pulled another one out of his back pocket and held it up. It was a can of Fanta Orange Soda. Brody said, "Do you want a soda, partner?" I kind of hesitated and then said, "Okay," and he tossed it to me. Then we shared a moment of very small talk, and we both headed out to do our assignments.

During that morning we occasionally crossed paths, and he was always holding a Fanta Orange Soda. Once he offered me another one, but I declined. He was asking me some questions about electrical work, etc. As we talked, I was always "partner" to him.

Brody came over to me as I was on the 2nd floor of the hotel, which had 4 floors. He said, "Partner, I am finished with my work now, and I am leaving. But before I go, I want to let you in on something." He said it with a wry smile on his face, and I just looked at him, thinking, "Ummm... Okay, Brody. What's up?"

He took me just down the hall to the laundry room on the 2nd floor. In that room, there was a small access panel near the floor, beside one of the washing machines. Inside that access panel, there was a crawl space, and you could go into it and see both some electrical wiring, and also duct that leads out to one of the hotel rooms on the right. I had been aware of that access panel, because I had surveyed the hotel before I went there on Monday morning. But I did not think much of it.

Brody thought a lot about it, because he clued me in on something about it. He said, "Partner, do you know what? If you crawl down this crawl space about 4 feet and look to the right, you can see a small hole there. If you look in the hole, you can see into the hotel room that is just next door. Isn't that the craziest shit you've ever seen?" And he let out a bellowing laugh.

When Brody's laugh died down, he told me that he didn't make the hole. He said he became aware of it when he was looking at the duct that was inside of that area.

I was like...

After he told me this "news," he cheerfully said, "Well, I'm done here. Time to scoot and make hay at my next assignment. Happy trails, partner." And then he and his Fanta Orange Soda were gone.

I was like, wtf is going on? What in the actual fuck?!

Am I supposed to go into the crawl space, find that hole, and look into it? Or should I just ignore the whole thing? Is Brody trying to set me up? Did he make the hole? What the hell is going on?

I was freaked out. I just tried to put it out of my mind as I worked that Monday. But later in the afternoon, my curiosity got the best of me. I went into the laundry room. I was aware of the closed circuit monitor in that room, but I took some tools, with me, crawled down, and pretended like I was going to do some work with the wiring in that crawl space.

I crawled down 4 ft, as Brody said, and sure enough, down at about waist level, there was a hole. I looked into the hole, and INDEED, you could see into the hotel room next door. As I looked, I was absolutely shocked, and almost dropped a turd in my drawers when I could make out a human body moving in the room. I could not tell if it was a man or woman, but it was someone in the room, and that was all for me. I got the hell out of dodge. I left the crawl space, left the laundry room, and fought off the chills that were running down my spine.

In that moment, I was sure I was going to get busted.

The rest of the day, and the rest of the week I worked at that hotel, my mind was fluttering with ideas about what I should do. And I was completely freaked out about it.

"I should tell the hotel manager about it," I thought. But what if the manager tried to then blame it on me, saying I made the hole? Or maybe the manager already knew about the hole, and he, or some hotel workers, were using it to spy on people in that room.

Or maybe Brody made the hole. Maybe he had been spying. Or maybe for some reason, whatever reason, he was trying to set me up as a patsie. Maybe that is why he kept calling me partner.

Or maybe the hole was made by someone else, and who knows who that someone else might have been.

It was all so weird. I never returned to that hole during the week I was at the hotel. I was tempted, but I found the strength to stay away. And whenever I saw any of the hotel workers, I was thinking to myself, "Does this person know about the hole?"

I was so happy and relieved when Friday at 5:00 came around and I was finished at that hotel. Nothing came of the situation as far as I was concerned, but it was one of the freakiest weeks of my life.

Very interesting. Why is there a hole? How big is it? Seems suspicious on many levels.

The thing is, you can usually trust a guy handing out orange Fanta. If soda brands were characters in a John Hughes movie, Fanta would be the loyal friend who always gets hurt in the end but takes joy in his friends' success. Fanta isn't popular, flashy or brash. He's a good dude and leans heavily into being reliably mediocre.

If your weird electrician was giving out expensive Cokes I would have a different opinion of him. Passing out a high reputation soda is the equivalent of flashing an expensive watch at an Arby's Assistant Manager before inviting him to a "free seminar" that turns out to be AmWay. If your new "partner" was sharing Cokes and then showed you the hole, assume he's about to blackmail you. But he didn't. He shared a tasty, sensibly priced drink devoid of pretences.

There's simply nothing worrisome about Fanta, especially orange. Now, if it had been strawberry, there is reason for caution. Pocket-warm strawberry Fanta tastes like expeller-pressed paint thinner. Handing a strawberry Fanta to a person you don't know is like farting in the locker room and saying, "You guys smell that?" It's a harmless gag and all, but everyone is rightfully suspicious from then on. If your weird electrician offered you a can of crotch temperature strawberry and then invited you to check out a secret hole, you'd be right to assume someone is sticking a finger in your eye the first time you look through it.

Seems like dude is an innocent witness to this mystery, rather than a nefarian of peep hole crime. He might even have a touch of the 'tism, like an asperger's kid. If so, this secret has probably been gnawing a hole in his brain. Safe to say he's been looking desperately for someone he can trust before he can share the overwhelming weight of knowing a secret. Congrats on being that trusted person. I wonder how many people turned down a friendly 12oz can of retard fuel dipped in ballsweat before you came along and saved the day.

Sigh. You were filmed. You didn't notify anyone, which makes you an accomplice instead of a whistleblower. There are holes like that everywhere. Build your own home, know your contractors and who's subcontracting. Assume you're being watched whether in a hotel, air bnb or public restroom. Don't assume you're being watched for your safety and well-being.

What was the point of this thread again?

Oh yeah, the fanta was kapparot.

Happy Thanksgiving.