Photo via Flickr user Crystal Gutierrez
It was a standard job: A contractor in Corpus Christi, Texas, got called in Wednesday to fix a faulty lock in a room connected to a drive-through ATM. He hopped out of his car, walked into the little vault, and set to work. Then—as local NBC affiliate KRISTV reports—the man realized he was stuck.Somehow, the unidentified contractor got locked inside his strange domain. He'd left his phone in his car, and found himself in the belly of the beast that is a Bank of America ATM room without any way to call for help. Meanwhile, customers were pulling up every once in a while to withdraw cash. The contractor figured they were his only hope, and started slipping notes through the receipt slot begging someone—anyone—to send help.
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Corpus Christi Police Department officer Richard Olden told KRISTV most folks who saw the notes figured they were some kind of prank. But one particularly concerned customer decided he should probably call the cops."We come out here, and sure enough we can hear a little voice coming from the machine," Olden told KRISTV. "So we are thinking, This is a joke. It's got to be a joke."The contractor's supervisor eventually showed up, and—unable to get into the room any other way—police had to kick down the door and rescue the man. According to KTRK, he told them he'd been trapped inside for about two hours after something went wrong with the room's electronic lock—the very thing he'd come to fix in the first place.According to Olden, the whole thing was "a once in a lifetime situation that you will probably never see or hear again.""Everyone is okay," he said. "That somebody was stuck in the ATM, it was just crazy."Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.