This is Bee, a 36-year-old Louisiana resident who was living in a small, privately owned apartment building when the hired maintenance worker sent her a series of messages saying he was "coming in" to her unit "just to see [her] face."
The now-viral exchange happened over text messages — a common mode of communication used in apartment buildings both large and small.
Maintenance man at my last apartment:
Around 7:30 a.m., Bee told BuzzFeed that her neighboring unit's occupants had recently moved out and maintenance was being done within. So, when one of the workers texted her with a seemingly polite "How you doing" message, Bee immediately thought they might need access to her apartment to fix something shared by the two spaces. Instead, he responded by saying he missed her, and asked to come inside.
"No sir," Bee responded to the request. But that did not stop him from pushing with messages saying, "I'm here," "I'm coming in," and "Just opened it."
His efforts don't stop until she warns him, saying she'll call the police.
"I broke the lease a month later and blocked him," Bee said. "I felt unsafe, [so] I moved as soon as I had the resources to do so."
According to Bee, alerting the owners of the building did not feel like an option. "The owners were a married couple that just owned and renovated a house," she said. "They didn’t care about anything but the rent. All of the tenants had several complaints about various things. Nothing was ever handled." On top of this, the couple employed family and friends to help run the building, leaving their relationship with this particular maintenance worker questionable.
In the replies of her thread, many women began sharing their own harrowing stories with the maintenance team in their apartment buildings:
@ThunderCatHeaux I remember when i was in middle school our maintenance man broke into our apt and he replaced my moms ceiling fan with one that cast a star like shadow on the ceiling and he left a note about how he wanted her to see the stars 🥴 (1/2)
@ThunderCatHeaux my little sister had a scary maintenance man at her last apartment who would also text her creepy shit
And others recalled similar times when men abused their access to them through professional means:
@iguessnana @ThunderCatHeaux My friend told me a dude from a car dealership she went to went thru her records and found her number and started texting her. She was terrified but thankfully he didn't have her address. If anything happened to her I wouldn't know what I'd do.
"I was really not surprised to see so many women share very similar stories," Bee said. "But even though I wasn’t surprised, I was saddened and angered that so many women could relate. ... Some men just feel entitled to women."
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911. Contact your local police department to report stalking and stalking-related incidents and/or threats.