No rest for this Bradford locksmith
Saturday can be a quiet day for me workwise; which I don’t really mind as I am a keen archer and I can use that day to practice.
This particular Saturday I had just set my bow up (which is quite a lengthy process) when the phone rang. It was one of my regular customers, he explained that one of their tenants in Bradford couldn’t get into the building so I could I go immediately and gain access for them? So it was a case of dismantling my bow, packing it away and getting back on the road. That’s the nature of being a 24 hour locksmith.
I arrived at the property to find the tenant shivering outside the door, I tried her key in the Yale lock several times but had no success. I didn’t believe the snibb had dropped (this will deadlock the door and you can’t open it with a key) as this lock was relatively new I didn’t want to damage the lock because I knew there was nothing wrong with it. I then remembered that I could enter the building from the rear of the building.
In order to get through the building at the back I had to get through two doors, the first one was relatively easy to pick open, the second one caused a few problems, but again I was through that quite quickly.
I then had to climb three flights of stairs to get to the other side of the original door where the tenant was waiting, not easy when carrying a large, heavy tool bag.
Once I got there I could see that the snibb was down, “this can’t be right” was my initial thought; I let the tenant in and then tried to slam the door to see if it was this that made the snibb drop. It definitely wasn’t.
The tenant and I were trying to work out how this had happened. Being a locksmith is often akin to being a detective, the only thing I could think of was that someone had dropped the snibb from the inside.
The problem was this door need to be accessible all the time and it shouldn’t be locked as there are people living in the building.
We were just about to leave, still none the wiser, when a small man in a suit appeared which we found strange as none of the other tenants were at home. I asked him if he had pushed the snibb down to which he replied “Oh yes I did it about an hour ago” Unbelievably this guy, who it turned out was doing some work in the building, had been inside all of the time when the tenant and I were outside but didn’t think he should do anything about it. He just shrugged his shoulders and wandered off, which left me thinking sometimes it would be nice if people left well alone.
