When the employees come up missing, the 'Now Hiring' sign gets posted out front, but no more mention of the incident occurs. Always, a tide of rats preludes the attacks. As Warwick sends random employees down to string lights in the basement, prior to the cleaning detail, one by one they get attacked and killed by some unknown creature that lurks in the basement. The inspector takes the money and gives Warwick until after the 4th of July holiday weekend to clean up the building. Warwick pays-off the inspector $200 cash to give him some time to get the building in order before filing his report. Warwick meets with a building inspector who threatens to condemn the building if the rat infestation isn't cleared up and the basement cleared of the massive amounts of old materials stored. The foreman, Warwick (Stephen Macht) agrees to hire the drifter after first harassing him over being a drifter and having college experience listed on his application on the condition that John accepts minimum wage for the first 4 weeks and works the 11pm to 7am 'Graveyard Shift'. The local textile company is the largest employer in town, so he applies there. A drifter named John Hall (David Andrews) comes into a small town looking for work. The partner cranks the pump motor and begins pumping water into the building while sucking out water through hoses in the basement of the building, bringing with it many rats, and emptying the rats into the stream. The exterminator indicates to the partner on the ground that he is ready to begin. A man in the water is waiting by a pump motor for the exterminator to finish preparing the hoses. Behind the building is a stream of running water. He stuffs the end of the water hose down into the ventilation pipe of some indoor plumbing. The next day, an exterminator (Brad Dourif) crawling onto the roof of an industrial building dragging a fire hose. He stumbles backwards into the industrial machine and is slaughtered. A large shadow appears and the worker turns to a sight that scares him. As he continues the taunts, the rats watch on.

He tosses a rat into the large industrial machine and we watch the rat being torn to pieces and blood staining the cotton. As rats accumulate to watch the late-shift worker, he starts to taunt them and threaten them. He goes to the medical cabinet and gets an anti-bacterial ointment and gauze for his wound. In anger at the heat, the worker pounds his fist against a support beam and a rusty nail protruding from the beams punctures his hand. He takes a break and notices the thermometer on the wall indicates the temperature is over 100 degrees. The film opens with a late-shift worker in the basement floor of a textile company feeds bales of cotton into a large industrial machine.

Mr jones in graveyard shift