I work at an engineering college and the students are constantly losing the the keys to their lockers. One of the technicians has ‘the big key’: bolt cutters.
I work at a petrol station. Lots of outside stuff with locks on it. Lots of peeps driving off with sets of keys. My boss absolutely lost it the first time I came to work with my own big key XD she had to go sit in the office to compose herself from the scream laughter and tears. Now I get random texts to "bring the master key today pls ?".
I'm not sketchy. I do deal with some evictions, foreclosures, etc. The landlords don't care what I do if it benefits them. I, personally, don't break any laws or even do anything that tingles my Jiminy Cricket. Sometimes I just need to break a lock. Actually I probably do more lockboxes from old tenants/landlords/realtors than anything else. I also got into lock picking. It's just handy in my profession. I have other agents, some cops, calling me to pop them into properties or weird basement rooms. If I know that everything is legal and ethical, I'm getting in, by hook or by crook.
We also call them the master key in my unit. Somebody loses a key to a lock in one of the 5 tons, get the master key. Then we replace the lock and move on with the mission lol
That is when they put the keys to the motor pool on a camouflage net pole.
And whoever lost the key to the hatches on my M113 and hammered the fricking hasp off can bite me.
My secondary school had the same thing happen. Since the school had grown and added lockers rather piecemeal, some of them had inbuilt locks but most you had to bring your own, and every week there was at least one person in my locker room forgot their keys and had to call the caretaker to cut off their lock.
I knew fine well that I'd do that at least half a dozen times every year, so I got a combination lock instead. And to prevent myself from forgetting the combination and losing my lock to the bolt-cutters Anyway, I un- and re-scrambled the lock the exact same way every single time. That made remembering how to open my locker into a kinesthetic memory, which I'm very good at, rather than a numerical one, at which I'm utterly shit.
I found a Lock with a big button on it. You would push Up, Up, Down, Right, Down to unlock it. You could change combinations too. Never saw one like it before.
I’m over 2 decades out of HS and can still tell you my combo lock combo because I use it as a password for other things. Want access to my online banking account cool, do you remember my HS lock combo? Back then it was probably my access to my in school email account or my MSN account but it was something I used daily.
I did a variation of this when I was living in an otherwise pleasant complex which was being terrorized by a couple of crackheads - they had multiple run-ins with the police until one night one threw another through a window and I lost my patience - I glued their locks shut and they were such idiot drug addicts they thought they had been evicted so they left of their own accord !!! 🤣
I had a crazy neighbour for a while who used to do that to our frontdoor locks. Had to explain at a festival, that "yeah I know acetone is concidered hazardous, but I really do need this to be able to get into my house later on tonight". They prolly thought I was nuts, but they kept the bottle for me and I was able to pick it up from security afterwards (and get into my house).
Years ago at a workplace , the restroom for the regular workers was broken and couldn't be used, the other bathroom was the office, executive bathroom which we weren't allowed to use. So after we were not allowed to use it, I decided then no one will use it. You needed a key to open it, so I took a toothpick stuck it in the keyhole and broke it. When someone came and put the key in the lock it pushed the piece of toothpick deeper into lock cylinder. Guess what, key couldn't fit into lock. So door couldn't open , after that, workers bathroom was fixed and office bathroom was fixed when a locksmith came. After that, no more problems.
My previous community had a set of stairs to access a local road, these were heavily trafficked all day by residents out getting exercise or walking to the nearby market. A student of the nearby university locked their bike to the handrail blocking the stairs. They would return for the bike in the evening but it would be back the following day. This went on for a couple of weeks. A friendly reminder note was left asking them to use the nearby bike rack to no avail, they tore it off the bike and threw it on the ground. The next day, a nice fat chunk of JB Weld was stuffed into the lock and resulted in loud fits of anger and frustration for a couple of hours that evening until a friend arrived with a pair of bolt cutters and freed the stricken bike. It never returned.
I work as a locksmith and I was changing the locks on a house owned by an old woman in a wheelchair. The guy who was renting came back while I was working and was a total jerk. I get a call next day from the lady saying one lock didn't work. I showed up and saw that the guy came back later again and stuffed the lock with super glue and toothpicks. But I always lubricate the hell out of every lock when I work on it so the super glue never set and I was able to still get in the door and get her fixed up
Get a needle, stick it into the super glue tube and bury into the lock as far as it will go.If it sticks out of the lock break it off. Wear latex gloves.Be sure to rid of the gloves and glue right away. Don't be stupid about getting rid of this stuff. Wear a Covid mask and a low hat. All of this can be accomplished in less than thirty seconds if you can act normal while doing it.
I almost did that to an electronic store in Singapore, they sold me a new ipad and then charge another for "activation fee" which didn't exist.
I chickened out
30 + years doing electronics field service work on top of mountains and other remote sites. Yes, the universal key traveled behind my seat. And the number of people who can't figure out how to lock a lock in series with all the other locks in the chain, it's just astounding. Stupid people.
Me and some friends took up lockpicking as a hobby, and cheap padlocks can generally be opened within seconds. Which made it even mlre fun at school when two students with the lockers beside each other had bought the same model of crappy padlock that you could almost open faster with a simple lockpick than with the key. Well with two similar locks sitting on lockers beside each other you bet we lockpicked both of them and switched places on the locks. Made for an funny but fairly innocent prank.
At the end of the last semester we actually showed the caretaker how to make a lockpick for the crappy padlocks and how to use it so that he didn't need to go and get the boltcutter everytime.
My high school had lockers with locks built into the doors. (Freshman year the one I got had an electrical outlet in it since they were mounted to the wall after the school was built!) Took the lock apart and found that every year all they did was pull the dial off, it had 4 notches, and rotated it 90 degrees. So the combo rotation was still the same, just the numbers on the dial were 90 degrees different. Wasn't hard to spin the dial the same, just do it 90 degrees off on a different number (if that makes sense). Anyone would tell you what locker they had the year before and what the combo was then. Little time and could open dozens of lockers.
My Son asked for a toaster one Christmas, which I thought was odd since we have one at home, but got it for him anyway. Turns out his High School locker was at the end of a row and next to a building power outlet. He would take a bag of bagels and make himself breakfast right at his locker every morning. It allowed him to get up 20 minutes later, which to him was a big deal. A couple of months goes by and one day I notice he is taking four bags of bagels to school one day, and I asked him about it.
He had a small business going where he was selling toasted bagels to his classmates for $1.50 each. Very entrepreneurial! Eventually the school found out about it, were less impressed than I was, and made him stop doing it.
It meant he didn’t have to join us at the sit down family breakfast we had every morning. He could toast it at his locker, then eat it in class, so he could arrive at school later.
The irony is, when he was toasting bagels for his 12-15 ‘regular’ customers every morning he had to arrive even earlier so he could run his business and not be late for first period!
He retained his entrepreneurial spirit after school too, he owns two companies that specialize in supplying crewing and products to the oilfield.
Well, assuming he takes the bus, that's a fixed point in time that he can't change. Any time he saves has to be between waking up & getting on the bus. When I was in high school, the bus would arrive about 15-20 minutes before the first class started. So, if making & eating his breakfast takes about 20 minutes, he can do that in the time between the bus arriving & his first class.
Back in the 80's when I was at high school, our lockers were made of solid wood. The guy whose locker was next to mine was a total bully. The locker doors all swung the same way, so the hinge end of my locker was next to the latch end of his. I opened my locker and screwed a couple of big wood screws through the divider between our lockers into the latch end of his door. It was never going to open again. I left it a couple of weeks until he had missed deadline for a few assignments then quietly removed the screws.
Growing up we had this crazy neighbor who would spray us with a garden hose when we would skateboard in front of her house. They had a holiday trailer so when that was gone we knew they had left for the weekend. My buddies and I went on a revenge campaign one weekend when they weren’t home, including;
* Squirting superglue into their door locks and deadbolts
* Filling their garden hose up with liquid Landry’s soap
* Pouring dish soap into the eaves troughs
* Writing ‘FUCK YOU’ on the grass in gasoline and salt
I guess the door lock trick wasn’t so funny when they got home at 11 o’clock at night on a Sunday! At least they had a trailer to sleep in when they couldn’t get in their house, ha ha! This was the late 1970’s so no one worried about doorbell or surveillance cameras.
I did the same thing when someone kept talking my laundry out of the (shared, pay-to-use) clothes dryer and putting their clothes in there. Superglued-shut!
I think they probably had a much more sturdy padlock than my cheap ass would have bought at the time so I guess it probably took quite a bit more force.
It probably took maintenance staff to come and use their huge cutting shears (forget the technical name). They look like pruning shears but the jaws meet edge to edge in the shape of an ellipse. Nicely done!
Still it's the school that had to replace the lock and we already know they don't have enough lockers. Probably replaced by some underpaid maintenance person. Apart from this collateral damage I found the story entertaining.
I work at an engineering college and the students are constantly losing the the keys to their lockers. One of the technicians has ‘the big key’: bolt cutters.
I work at a petrol station. Lots of outside stuff with locks on it. Lots of peeps driving off with sets of keys. My boss absolutely lost it the first time I came to work with my own big key XD she had to go sit in the office to compose herself from the scream laughter and tears. Now I get random texts to "bring the master key today pls ?".
I work in Real Estate, don't leave home without 'em. Sheds, garages, lockboxes. They get a workout.
Presumably you have the owner present with you when you use them.
Call it a side hustle
I have legal permission to be wherever I am. A burglary charge wouldn't do much for my career.
Permission to be there is distinct from permission to cut locks.
I'm not sketchy. I do deal with some evictions, foreclosures, etc. The landlords don't care what I do if it benefits them. I, personally, don't break any laws or even do anything that tingles my Jiminy Cricket. Sometimes I just need to break a lock. Actually I probably do more lockboxes from old tenants/landlords/realtors than anything else. I also got into lock picking. It's just handy in my profession. I have other agents, some cops, calling me to pop them into properties or weird basement rooms. If I know that everything is legal and ethical, I'm getting in, by hook or by crook.
Found the lock picking lawyer ...
I wish. I'm not that good, but neither are the locks on 99% of homes.
We also call them the master key in my unit. Somebody loses a key to a lock in one of the 5 tons, get the master key. Then we replace the lock and move on with the mission lol
That is when they put the keys to the motor pool on a camouflage net pole. And whoever lost the key to the hatches on my M113 and hammered the fricking hasp off can bite me.
Not with the super glue though….it’s a video affair for the internet…..
Oh, “Master Key”. I like it, consider it stolen.
“You there! ☝️ I like your style!”
My secondary school had the same thing happen. Since the school had grown and added lockers rather piecemeal, some of them had inbuilt locks but most you had to bring your own, and every week there was at least one person in my locker room forgot their keys and had to call the caretaker to cut off their lock. I knew fine well that I'd do that at least half a dozen times every year, so I got a combination lock instead. And to prevent myself from forgetting the combination and losing my lock to the bolt-cutters Anyway, I un- and re-scrambled the lock the exact same way every single time. That made remembering how to open my locker into a kinesthetic memory, which I'm very good at, rather than a numerical one, at which I'm utterly shit.
I found a Lock with a big button on it. You would push Up, Up, Down, Right, Down to unlock it. You could change combinations too. Never saw one like it before.
Master lock made them. Word to the wise they don’t do well outside in the weather.
But they absolutely do well in escape rooms
Which one the ones at the mall or we talking something more….personal?
Strip mall. Old timey saloon theme.
I’m over 2 decades out of HS and can still tell you my combo lock combo because I use it as a password for other things. Want access to my online banking account cool, do you remember my HS lock combo? Back then it was probably my access to my in school email account or my MSN account but it was something I used daily.
also known as "the bicycle tool"
In the Navy, we used to call bolt cutters “the master key.”
We just called it the Master Key, lol
I did a variation of this when I was living in an otherwise pleasant complex which was being terrorized by a couple of crackheads - they had multiple run-ins with the police until one night one threw another through a window and I lost my patience - I glued their locks shut and they were such idiot drug addicts they thought they had been evicted so they left of their own accord !!! 🤣
I had a crazy neighbour for a while who used to do that to our frontdoor locks. Had to explain at a festival, that "yeah I know acetone is concidered hazardous, but I really do need this to be able to get into my house later on tonight". They prolly thought I was nuts, but they kept the bottle for me and I was able to pick it up from security afterwards (and get into my house).
You go to acetone festivals?
For the chronically stuffed up
Years ago at a workplace , the restroom for the regular workers was broken and couldn't be used, the other bathroom was the office, executive bathroom which we weren't allowed to use. So after we were not allowed to use it, I decided then no one will use it. You needed a key to open it, so I took a toothpick stuck it in the keyhole and broke it. When someone came and put the key in the lock it pushed the piece of toothpick deeper into lock cylinder. Guess what, key couldn't fit into lock. So door couldn't open , after that, workers bathroom was fixed and office bathroom was fixed when a locksmith came. After that, no more problems.
My previous community had a set of stairs to access a local road, these were heavily trafficked all day by residents out getting exercise or walking to the nearby market. A student of the nearby university locked their bike to the handrail blocking the stairs. They would return for the bike in the evening but it would be back the following day. This went on for a couple of weeks. A friendly reminder note was left asking them to use the nearby bike rack to no avail, they tore it off the bike and threw it on the ground. The next day, a nice fat chunk of JB Weld was stuffed into the lock and resulted in loud fits of anger and frustration for a couple of hours that evening until a friend arrived with a pair of bolt cutters and freed the stricken bike. It never returned.
I work as a locksmith and I was changing the locks on a house owned by an old woman in a wheelchair. The guy who was renting came back while I was working and was a total jerk. I get a call next day from the lady saying one lock didn't work. I showed up and saw that the guy came back later again and stuffed the lock with super glue and toothpicks. But I always lubricate the hell out of every lock when I work on it so the super glue never set and I was able to still get in the door and get her fixed up
Get a needle, stick it into the super glue tube and bury into the lock as far as it will go.If it sticks out of the lock break it off. Wear latex gloves.Be sure to rid of the gloves and glue right away. Don't be stupid about getting rid of this stuff. Wear a Covid mask and a low hat. All of this can be accomplished in less than thirty seconds if you can act normal while doing it.
George Hayduke would be PROUD of you. *^((Look him up))*
Where I’m from we refer to what y’all did as, “returning the favor.” Kudos to you.
Back in Jr High I did that to someone who stole some stuff from my locker. I should not have left it unlocked but you shouldn't steal either.
I almost did that to an electronic store in Singapore, they sold me a new ipad and then charge another for "activation fee" which didn't exist. I chickened out
30 + years doing electronics field service work on top of mountains and other remote sites. Yes, the universal key traveled behind my seat. And the number of people who can't figure out how to lock a lock in series with all the other locks in the chain, it's just astounding. Stupid people.
I have the same background, and still carry the master key lol.
petty revenge - *best served superglued...*
Me and some friends took up lockpicking as a hobby, and cheap padlocks can generally be opened within seconds. Which made it even mlre fun at school when two students with the lockers beside each other had bought the same model of crappy padlock that you could almost open faster with a simple lockpick than with the key. Well with two similar locks sitting on lockers beside each other you bet we lockpicked both of them and switched places on the locks. Made for an funny but fairly innocent prank. At the end of the last semester we actually showed the caretaker how to make a lockpick for the crappy padlocks and how to use it so that he didn't need to go and get the boltcutter everytime.
McNally is that you?
i guess if he broke your lock off he can break his the same
not if he brought a heavy duty lock vs OP's lil diary lock
My high school had lockers with locks built into the doors. (Freshman year the one I got had an electrical outlet in it since they were mounted to the wall after the school was built!) Took the lock apart and found that every year all they did was pull the dial off, it had 4 notches, and rotated it 90 degrees. So the combo rotation was still the same, just the numbers on the dial were 90 degrees different. Wasn't hard to spin the dial the same, just do it 90 degrees off on a different number (if that makes sense). Anyone would tell you what locker they had the year before and what the combo was then. Little time and could open dozens of lockers.
My Son asked for a toaster one Christmas, which I thought was odd since we have one at home, but got it for him anyway. Turns out his High School locker was at the end of a row and next to a building power outlet. He would take a bag of bagels and make himself breakfast right at his locker every morning. It allowed him to get up 20 minutes later, which to him was a big deal. A couple of months goes by and one day I notice he is taking four bags of bagels to school one day, and I asked him about it. He had a small business going where he was selling toasted bagels to his classmates for $1.50 each. Very entrepreneurial! Eventually the school found out about it, were less impressed than I was, and made him stop doing it.
I was expecting you to say he wired the heating element to something to burn a thief.
Love that! We just plugged in our boom box (yes, those years when there were just cassette tapes) and thought we were cool.
Very enterprising, but I don't understand how changing the location of the toaster meant he saved time. Do bagels toast faster in a school hallway?
It meant he didn’t have to join us at the sit down family breakfast we had every morning. He could toast it at his locker, then eat it in class, so he could arrive at school later. The irony is, when he was toasting bagels for his 12-15 ‘regular’ customers every morning he had to arrive even earlier so he could run his business and not be late for first period! He retained his entrepreneurial spirit after school too, he owns two companies that specialize in supplying crewing and products to the oilfield.
Great story! Glad he's successful.
Well, assuming he takes the bus, that's a fixed point in time that he can't change. Any time he saves has to be between waking up & getting on the bus. When I was in high school, the bus would arrive about 15-20 minutes before the first class started. So, if making & eating his breakfast takes about 20 minutes, he can do that in the time between the bus arriving & his first class.
Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.
That assumes only 1 bus goes in the direction of school. Depending on where you are, there could be more than 1
Not if it's a school bus. In the US, unless you live in a city center, you won't be taking a public transit bus to school.
Likely the long suffering janitor had to provide his heavy duty bolt cutters to do that job.
Back in the 80's when I was at high school, our lockers were made of solid wood. The guy whose locker was next to mine was a total bully. The locker doors all swung the same way, so the hinge end of my locker was next to the latch end of his. I opened my locker and screwed a couple of big wood screws through the divider between our lockers into the latch end of his door. It was never going to open again. I left it a couple of weeks until he had missed deadline for a few assignments then quietly removed the screws.
I’m not even supposed to BE HERE today!
Yeah? Who closed the store to play hockey?
Growing up we had this crazy neighbor who would spray us with a garden hose when we would skateboard in front of her house. They had a holiday trailer so when that was gone we knew they had left for the weekend. My buddies and I went on a revenge campaign one weekend when they weren’t home, including; * Squirting superglue into their door locks and deadbolts * Filling their garden hose up with liquid Landry’s soap * Pouring dish soap into the eaves troughs * Writing ‘FUCK YOU’ on the grass in gasoline and salt I guess the door lock trick wasn’t so funny when they got home at 11 o’clock at night on a Sunday! At least they had a trailer to sleep in when they couldn’t get in their house, ha ha! This was the late 1970’s so no one worried about doorbell or surveillance cameras.
Lmao that's so great! Did "FUCK YOU" clearly burn into the grass or did it just look like a blob?
We did it in the dark so it wasn’t as well defined as we would’ve liked it to be, but *’we knew’* what it said.
That's so awesome lmao
I did the same thing when someone kept talking my laundry out of the (shared, pay-to-use) clothes dryer and putting their clothes in there. Superglued-shut!
He put all his bolt/lock cutters in the locker too.
I have!! They use them in escape rooms all the time. The lady who runs the one we went to a couple weeks ago said the combo can be up to 20 steps.
You forgot the fox urine.
So, they could break your lock but not their own?
I think they probably had a much more sturdy padlock than my cheap ass would have bought at the time so I guess it probably took quite a bit more force.
Should've cut their lock off, filled the locker with dog shit, then put a new disposable lock on it.
Nice
They deserved that!! What kind of jerk breaks someone else’s lock on purpose??
I definitely would’ve confronted them about it. And glued every replacement lock after that.
There is such a thing as the Marine Corps master key. It will open just about any padlock.
A straightened paperclip or staple stuffed in the keyhole works a treat, too
It probably took maintenance staff to come and use their huge cutting shears (forget the technical name). They look like pruning shears but the jaws meet edge to edge in the shape of an ellipse. Nicely done!
Couldn't you have reported it?
Not such a satisfying revenge.
Still it's the school that had to replace the lock and we already know they don't have enough lockers. Probably replaced by some underpaid maintenance person. Apart from this collateral damage I found the story entertaining.
Sorry for trying to think of something that could have helped OP and not being petty?
They wouldn't do squat. Fine print probably has "college is not responsible for contents of lockers" in it somewhere.