It seems like the sort of bizarre situation that would only happen on an episode of Friends, but a man in Corpus Christi, Texas really found himself on the wrong side of the ATM glass earlier this week and lived to tell the tale.
An officer from the Corpus Christi Police Department summed up the dramatic rescue perfectly when he said that it was "a once in a lifetime situation that you will probably never see or hear again."
In case you were wondering about the physics of being trapped inside a cash machine, it turns out there's a small room behind the machines at most bank locations where the money is loaded in. The man was repairing a lock inside when the door closed on him, while his cell phone was outside in his truck.
Desperate to escape, the man actually had to pass notes out through the ATM's cash slot. "Please help, I'm stuck in here," one said, before listing a number for the contractor's boss.
Read how he was finally rescued on the next page!
In another strange twist to this story, the first customers to find his notes thought the man was joking. Finally, one took the note seriously and called the police. Officers could hear a faint voice behind the ATM and went into the bank to investigate.
After kicking down the door to the ATM room, they found the man safe and sound. It's not the most dramatic story, but definitely one that these officers will remember for years.
In fact, being locked inside an ATM isn't as unusual as you might expect. Two women from Shanghai, China had to be freed by firefighters after getting locked into a public ATM.
In another case, a drunk man found himself stuck under the walls of an ATM. He wasn't able to use the electric door, and decided to slither out under a ventilation gap instead. Cops had to break the glass wall to set him free.
Share these stories with your friends, before they get stuck in an ATM too!