One Door Closes… And That’s It

(My husband and I are students. We just moved into a new apartment yesterday with our baby. The front door and balcony door are at the same corner of the living room, and a small gate separates the balcony from the stairwell. Every apartment has matching keys for its front and balcony doors. We spend our first morning in the apartment unpacking, then go to the store for groceries and some storage shelves, leaving through the balcony door. Returning with cold groceries, and a baby screaming in hunger — and anger at being in the hot car again right after riding across the country in the backseat with no rear AC vents — we find that the balcony door does not open with our key, and the front door is still chained shut from the inside. I call the office.)

Me: “Hi, I’m locked out of my apartment, because the front door is chained shut from the inside, and whoever re-keyed the apartment didn’t re-key the balcony door. Now I’m locked outside with groceries and a screaming baby.”

Desk Guy: “Oh no! Why don’t you come down to the office and get the spare key so you can get inside to your child?”

(He continues to misunderstand the situation, thinking that my baby is inside instead of outside with me. He also doesn’t understand my concerns of whether the spare will work when my copy doesn’t, and insists that I come down for a spare key. I go get the key, and he tells me he’ll call the locksmith.)

Me: *taking the spare that’s just as shiny and new as mine* “Great. I guess I’ll return this after I break in through my open window.”

Desk Guy: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Because the front door that the key works on is chained shut from the inside, like I told you three times on the phone!”

(Sure enough, the key didn’t work. When the locksmith showed up, he found that the problem was that the door was shutting wrong due to maintenance never replacing the worn-out weather seal. We plan on being ruthless with the office about all the problems they’ve decided to let linger with the fact that the building will be demolished next year!)