‘Go check’: A Florida nurse says a patient’s relative told her the paper towels were not coming out, but she found towels in the dispenser

Florida nurse Rachael says a patient’s relative asked her to inspect a paper towel dispenser, then went in after her and stood between her and the restroom door. According to Knewz, she described the encounter in a TikTok about a shift at work.

Rachael says the man described the towels as “not coming out” before directing her, “Go check.” Inside the restroom, she found the dispenser stocked with paper towels. “As soon as I walked in, I felt uneasy,” she says.

She says the man came in behind her. “Did I just trap myself in the bathroom with this weird guy I don’t even know?” she remembers thinking. When she turned around, she says, he was blocking her path. “Oh, well, I don’t know how that happened,” she recalls him telling her about the towels.

Rachael told him to step aside

Next, she says, he called her “really pretty” and asked, “What’s your name?” She adds that he tried to get a look at her badge. Rachael told him, “Sir, step aside,” repeated it, then ordered, “Move out of my way.” Upworthy reported that she delivered the instruction loudly and firmly and escaped the situation, acting “instead of staying quiet to avoid conflict.”

“My heart is racing,” Rachael says as she recounts the encounter. She encouraged women to stay on guard at work, even where they expect protection. “Doesn’t matter if you have security around you, if you’re at work, if you think you’re covered,” she states. She adds, “It doesn’t matter where you are as a woman, don’t you ever think for one second to let your guard down.”

Women Against Crime, a group cited in that coverage, states, “Assertiveness can deter an attacker before he attacks.” The group also says getting loud “could deter him or her from invading your personal space.” The piece links verbal assertiveness to “clearly communicating your boundaries” and states it is “important to trust one’s instincts.”

Other women have shared similar encounters with strangers, as when a man followed a Dallas woman. Shoppers have described being tailed in stores too, as when a man followed a woman through Walmart. Florida’s criminal code defines false imprisonment as forcibly, by threat or secretly confining, abducting, imprisoning or restraining another person “without lawful authority and against her or his will.”

Separately, in 2021 and 2022, the health care and social assistance industry accounted for 72.8 percent of private-industry workplace violence cases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found. Those cases required days away from work, job restriction or transfer.

OSHA states it currently has no specific standards for workplace violence. It does list working alone or in isolated areas among the factors that may contribute to violence. The agency has also published recommendations for late-night retail establishments, though not as a standard.

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