One of those types of days. I woke up, a little out of it and was rushing to work. I swore I had everything I needed and I even doubled checked. Once I had everything, I walked out the door.
When I go to lock the top lock, I reached for my keys and couldn’t find them. I quickly remembered that they were on the dresser. I go to opened the door and I locked the bottom lock.
Of course I did. I do it by habit all the time.
Now I’m thankful I work for Doordash and not some other company. This type of day could have been a fireable offense, and understandable so.
Credit Card
I pulled out my credit card and tried to break in. I have done this plenty of times before with little trouble. Of course, today is today-ing (is that a word?). The credit card didn’t work at all. I’m not even sure if I was close to getting it open or not.
So I checked the window, maybe it was open. Nope. I locked the window.
I went back to try to credit cards again. Now it’s starting to get hot. On that day, Los Angeles in the middle of a heat wave. By the end of that day it would be 110 degrees. At the time of my lockout it was 10:30 am. I’ve been trying for over thirty minutes.
Call Landlord
Okay, I told myself to stay calm and call the landlord. I texted her twice and called her twice. No response. I can’t get mad because I want to focus on solving this problem.
I’ll call the property management company, who’s basically my landlord’s bosses. The secretary answered the phone and told me they my building does not handle lockouts. There was absolutely no service they could offer me. I had to go call a locksmith on my on dime. I just hung up in her face.
Locksmith Comes
I did a quick google search and found two locksmiths. Both would charge me about $100 but one would going to charge me $80 or $90 and the other would charge me about $120 or so. I chose the $90 locksmith.
He would arrive about twenty minutes later. The job took him all but five minutes to get me in. So I’m happy but I’m out this money. He asked if I had a pen. I walked in the apartment to get a pen. When I walked back out, my landlord is standing at my doorstep. “Hey did you get in your apartment?” she asked.
“Ah…yeah,” I replied as coldly as possible. Hey, I was annoyed.
“Gosh, okay.” she said as she walked away.
“Hey I called you twice and texted you.”
“Sorry. I was in a meeting, I couldn’t get out,” she said. I just struggled my shoulders. She was nice enough to give the locksmith a pen, which I, of course, returned. But I just felt like it wasn’t a real concern.
Anyhow, the locksmith costed $104 at the end of it all. I guess there was some kind of additional fee or something. I really don’t remember.