New homebuyer evicted

Here’s the scenario I walked into- a girl closes on her first home a week ago. She’s slowly cleaning it up, moving her stuff in; and this morning, she decided she was going to paint. She goes to her new house, and not only does her key no longer work, but the locks were actually GONE, replaced by a different set; and the yard had been mowed.
She calls her broker, and he doesn’t know what’s going on, either! The broker calls us to go out there, let her back in, and replace the locks.

SO, I go out there, and it turns out, the bank that owned the house before accidentally sent a maintenance company out there to winterize the house, thinking it was vacant. So the water and gas had been shut off, breakers had all been flipped, pipes were completely winterized. Needless to say, the broker got that situation taken care of as fast as he could, and I got her back on her feet with a new lock on her front door that worked great.

I felt really bad for her, though. First house, and that happens. Sucks!

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Don't ruin my carpet, instead, ruin my expensive curtains!

As I was writing up the invoice for a customer, I figured I'd sit next to her in the living room. She had light carpet, so I didn't want to stand on it with my shoes on. So I saw, what I thought was, a rug rolled up on the carpet. I jumped over to that, & sat down. The longer I looked at that expensive rug under my feet, the more I started to realize it wasn't a rug at all!

So I asked her in a "I'm realizing I just did something really bad" kind of tone: "this isn't a rug, is it." She said "no, it's a curtain" I jumped off, & I swear I made the sound of a donkey when I jumped, because I felt like such a jackass!

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Old woman+gps+locks=confusing!

So I'm in Home Depot picking up a lock that we don't keep in stock for a customer. I overhear this old woman trying to explain to the "zit-faced employee", as my uncle would put it, how she bought this knob for her door, & it's missing a piece. So I asked her if I could help, so she starts trying to explain it to me, but the employee continues to interrogate her on the details of what she needs.

As he searched the shelves looking for a solution, she turns to me & says, in the most typical grandma voice you can imagine: "this is more confusing than my new gps!".
I just cracked up!

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Sorority Chanting

While working at a sorority house today, I had to replace a door closer on their FRONT door. Today was the first day of orientation (or whatever they call it). Groups of girls were going in and out of this door all day. All the sorority girls would gather around the entrance, and as newcomers would go in and out, they’d all chant. Don’t ask me what they were saying, even though I heard 4 sessions of this. I could hardly understand them!This was the first time I’d seen this, it was pretty interesting. Later a friend told me how the whole process worked, and it made a little more sense, but it’s still kind of weird. I recorded this with my work phone.

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3...4 strikes and you're out!

The company I work for recently hired a guy, who, I guess, is pretty new to locksmithing. Today, he went out to a job to rekey 4 locks on a house.

For those who don’t know, that’s a 20-30 minute job, tops....

3 HOURS later, the customer is calling our dispatch office to complain, saying it’s ridiculous (because it was), and she’s very frustrated. My dispatcher asked me to go out and help him out.
STRIKE 1: Turns out, he’d taken half the patio door apart to get a lock out that he could have removed with ONE screw. But he didn’t bother calling anyone to find that out.

STRIKE 2: He kept trying to rekey it, and couldn’t figure it out! It’s really not that difficult to figure out, but once again, he didn’t bother calling anyone to get advice. I rekeyed it for him and reinstalled it on the door, along with all the other parts he’d taken off.

STRIKE 3: He had another cylinder fall apart while reinstalling it on the door, apparently because he tried to force it on the door. So I had to show him how to put it on the door gently.

All the locks were installed and rekeyed, so I thought it was safe to leave.

I drove 3 blocks down the road and stopped at a coffee shop I frequent. 10 minutes later, I get a phone call from dispatch saying that she’s calling back saying that her keys don’t work! I’m thinking it’s gotta be something simple, I watched them all function perfectly! So I volunteered to go take care of it since the other tech had already left. When I pulled up, the customer was standing in the front yard because she was locked out. She locked the doors, and went to leave. Luckily she tried her keys before she left only to find that they didn’t work.

STRIKE 4: I looked at her keys, tried them, and I could tell by looking at them that they were different than the ones I’d been handling earlier. I called the tech and told him he’d given the customer the WRONG keys. He said he was already 25 minutes away. So instead of having him come back, I just had him pull over, and read me the code stamped on the RIGHT key. I cut them 3 new keys, tried them out, and left. They were happy, FINALLY, and hopefully they use us again.

I guarantee next time they’ll request an experienced locksmith! She even asked me, “Why couldn’t they have just sent you?” How can I answer that? I tried to explain that we all run into things that we’ve never seen before, and he was just having a bad day. He really should have called someone after 15-30 minutes of no success. I guess she even told him that if he’d never worked on one, then please call someone else. But he didn’t. I would have been frustrated too, if I were her. She didn’t even LIVE there, it was a rental property of hers, so she was just sitting there waiting. Who would ever imagine you’d need to request an experience locksmith to rekey 4 locks?! Oh well, well all have bad days. I just hope he learned his lesson on this one.

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You don't have to be rich to tip

Although you'd think the rich would be the ones to tip, that's not nearly the case. Tips seem to come from the most unlikely people at the most unlikely times.

Today, I did a job for a black man, in the ghetto of Austin, in one of the dumpiest, grossest houses I've ever been in. He had me do about $90 worth of work. Adjust a couple deadbolts, & repair one. He tipped me $20! I was shocked. & yet I can't tell you how many million+ dollar homes I've worked in, & got no tip. But, then again, I have been tipped by them before!

When I have a tech come over, I tip him if I see he's done a really good job, or done an undesirable job, or has even worked really hard.

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Driven to Tears

I just unlocked a lady's car at a grocery store, & she sounded pretty frantic on the phone, said she had to pee so bad she was going to explode, & also said she was going to melt, I guess cuz it's warm out? The sun is down, & yes it's warm, but not melting warm!
Anyway, so after I unlocked her car, she started crying. She said "you just don't know how it feels to be so helpless!" I felt bad for her. It is a scary feeling, & a very helpless feeling, to be locked out of your car or home. I tried to comfort her in saying that at least it wasn't very expensive, but she reassured me that another company said they'd do it for $15 cheaper, & if she had hired them, she'd be sitting at home by now...

...Oh....well....

Then she went on to explain that they were rude to her on the phone, so that's why she called us.

Thanks, Pop-a-Lock, for being a bunch of douches!

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