Window Washers Share Some Exciting Stories About The Unusual Things They’ve Witnessed Through the Glass While Working

Window washers usually blend into the background, but the job puts them inches away from other people’s private moments. From office towers to suburban homes, they end up seeing things most people would never expect to happen in plain view.

That is what makes these stories so strange, funny, and sometimes uncomfortable. A few are awkward, a few are shocking, and a few are just plain unforgettable, because once you have seen something through the glass, it is hard to unsee it.

Here are some of the wildest things window washers have witnessed while working.

1. "She seems really sad and lonely"

"The weirdest thing to me is a mansion with round-the-clock staff inside; they even wear uniforms. It’s just this one rich guy, his wife, and their two kids. I’m not allowed inside, but I can see the wife. She’s surrounded by the serving staff, but she never talks to any of them, and they don’t talk to her. She seems really sad and lonely."

2. She was completely nude

"I washed windows once. I'm still not sure if it was on purpose, but I was washing skylights on a regular house when the daughter walked into the bathroom naked and started checking herself out. She was the same age as me, about 20 at the time. I didn’t know what to do, so I apologized. Her parents heard and made fun of her the rest of the day. I’ve never seen someone turn so red as when her dad said, 'So you were giving the cleaning boy a show?' They were getting ready to sell the house, and I was there for another 8 hours cleaning."

That job can get awkward fast.

3. She was smiling at me

"I only did the job for about 8 or 9 months but saw two unexpected things.

I got to the top of the ladder and saw a guy I know is a priest enjoying some porn. I scurried back down the ladder hoping he would hear me and then slowly went back up. He obviously had heard me because when I got back to the window, he was standing up reading a Bible.

The other time, I got to the top of the ladder and saw a woman in her 80s sitting on her bed completely naked. I was sure she saw me, so I gave her a few minutes before going back to the window. When I got there, she was sitting in exactly the same place, still naked, smiling at me. I got a job in an office soon after."

4. That's how I met your grandmother, kids

"My (maternal) grandfather was a window washer in the 1930s. He saw my (eventual) grandmother on the other side of the glass."

Some of these stories are funny, and some are just plain weird.

5. I saved her life

"I was volunteering for the first time at this small place a while ago because of high school, and they gave me a simple job: a bottle of spray and a towel to wipe down the windows.

So I did it obediently, and while looking through the window, I could see across the road there was a sidewalk and some apartments. On the sidewalk, there were some trees-neither too small nor too big, just your average trees. I could see this lump dangling on a branch, and I immediately recognized it as a wasp nest because my neighborhood had a lot.

I remember thinking to myself, 'Man, I feel bad for whoever has to take care of that.' (For some reason, I thought people like beekeepers didn’t exist.) Lo and behold, a white, middle-aged woman, kind of chubby, probably in her 50s, was watching from a reasonable distance. She went back into her apartment and came back out with a metal baseball bat. I stopped wiping the windows and watched in horror, thinking, 'Uh oh.' I started heading towards the door to yell 'stop,' but I wasn’t quick enough.

She ran up to the nest and took a good hit at it. I guess she tried to run away from the nest, but sprinting is a bit hard in your 50s, and her weight didn’t help. Yikes. She got stung and kind of fell on the ground in the process. Wasp stings hurt like hell. I told the store manager what happened, and she called an ambulance. She got whisked off, and that’s the end of the story."

6. He had an audience

"My boyfriend has done a lot of high-rise window washing. As he was doing his thing, a man walked into an office, unzipped his pants, proceeded to pee into a potted plant, and walked back out as soon as he was done doing his business. The man was never aware that he had an audience."

7. Best job in the world

"I used to wash the windows of a house that turned out to be a brothel.

I should have known; really, the signs were all there. Different men answering the door, all beds were king-size with silky sheets, showers in every room, etc..."

8. He has his own office

"A piglet. As in, a baby pig, not the Winnie the Pooh character.

No idea why he got an office on the 10th floor."

The next few stories get even stranger.

This is similar to the husband and wife fight over pressing one button to keep floors clean.

9. She thought I was a neanderthal

"The strangest was a woman who watched me do my work from the other side, pointing at all the streaks and spots as if I were missing them all. Her windows were filthy because we’d had a rainstorm followed by a dust storm (only in Texas). I knew it’d take more than one pass to get it all, so I started with the big squeegee to get the bulk of the dirt off before going at it again with the smaller one that doesn’t leave streaks.

She was losing her mind, tapping during the first pass, pointing at the parts I was going to go over again. She pointed out the wet streaks that dried up almost immediately into nothing but clean window. She pointed at the spots I had to really get at when the squeegee didn’t get them. She pointed at me a lot, and I’m not sure what that was about.

As part of the job, I also remove any spider webs or hornet/wasp nests I see. Wasps and hornets aren’t really a big deal if you get the jump on them. You reach up, grab their mud nest, and just smash it in your hands before they get out to bite you. This lady kept freaking out and making barfing faces whenever I did it. She looked completely disgusted. She didn’t ask me to stop cleaning her windows, though, so I don’t know what she expected me to do. Not do what I was contracted to do?

The lady clearly thought I was a neanderthal. She later complained that she had to do all the work, pointing it all out to me. I tried to explain that I could sit on a bus and point out the route, but that...[truncated]

10. I saw some weird things

"I used to be a professional window washer for mostly very high-end houses. I worked on a few celebrity homes, but I really don’t have any interesting stories from them. Here are the top 3 weird places I remember working.

The first place wasn’t a single occurrence but a particular client. To picture this guy, imagine a more boring version of Steve Carell.

This dude had a larger house, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,500 square feet. He had Rolladen shutters around his entire house. For those who don’t know what they are, imagine metalish window covers that roll down over the whole window-something you’d see in a zombie apocalypse movie. That in and of itself wasn’t that weird. But I still remember the first time those shutters went up. The guy had zero furniture. None. Nada. Nothing except for a very basic queen-sized bed with white sheets in one of the bedrooms. The guy would follow us around from the inside and leer at us the entire time we’d be cleaning the windows.

Then when we’d do the inside, he’d follow us around with a roll of paper towels and dab up any minor droplet that would hit the ground. Keep in mind, we always used drop cloths when we cleaned inside glass. We were used to working in the nicest of nice homes, so we were always very careful not to get water on the floor. That wasn’t good enough for this dude. He’d literally stand 2 feet behind you with the roll and just stare.

The next place that I can remember that was...[truncated]

11. I almost threw up

"Washing windows for a hospital, certain operating rooms have windows... the doctors just waved at me as I could see this person's midsection cut open on a table. I almost threw up down the side of the building."

12. I'm sure he will never forget that

"So I was on the unfortunate side of the incident. I went to go #2; the window is right behind the toilet... you can see where this is going. I turned back to see a guy looming over me through thinly veiled curtains. I immediately flushed and farted out of there. I’m sure he will never forget that."

A few of them are hard to top.

13. Not weird necessarily but certainly unpleasant

"Finally, a question I can answer. We were cleaning a fairly tall building, 12 stories if I recall correctly, adjacent to an equally tall government office building. This office building had several bedrooms on the top level, which we could see from the roof but certainly not from the ground. From where we were standing, this bedroom was about ten meters away. As we were setting up, a naked dude jumped onto his bed with an iPad and started rubbing one out furiously, facing us.

Not weird necessarily, but certainly unpleasant."

14. The Ex-Girlfriend

"On my first job as a window washer, I went to this house, started washing windows, and saw my ex-girlfriend having sex with her new boyfriend. Then she came outside and started yelling at me that 'this is insane' and 'window washers don’t come to people’s houses at 3 in the morning' and 'I’m pretty sure they carry more than just Great Value Window Cleaner and a roll of paper towels.'

I hate when people can’t be professional and mature when it comes to difficult jobs."

15. He was wearing nothing but dress shoes

"Just a regular window cleaner here. I was once going up my ladders to clean a bedroom window on the second floor at around 8 AM. As I got to the top of the ladder, I was confronted with a couple going at it at an angle that indicated that he was, shall we say, taking the road less traveled.

Fair enough, lots of window cleaners see people naked or doing it, but this dude, for some reason, at 8 AM, was wearing a pair of socks and dress shoes. Apart from that, they were both butt naked.

Now I can only assume that they were too deeply engrossed to have heard the clatter of my ladders against the window sill, but I got done with that window real quick and just about slid down the ladder."

Window washing definitely comes with a view.

Wait, it gets worse at dinner too, see how he offered his wife a quit option.

He offered his wife the option to quit her job, then got called misogynistic at dinner.