we were all locked in

The backup doorman was on duty. He decided to padlock the only entrance to the building, and then to sleep in a different place from usual so he couldn’t be found. For one hour I looked for him, until finally a neighbor woke up and somehow found him.

Being locked *into* your residence is worse than being locked out. Thankfully, it’s a rare experience for obvious reasons.

The only other time it happened to me was in Germany. I was traveling through the country, and accepted an offer to spend the night in Gießen, where my first graduate school roommate was staying with a woman he knew. She left for work before we left the house in the morning. We left her apartment, went downstairs, and found that you needed a key to get out of the building. (?!) (I love Continental Europeans, but they often do clinically insane things with locks and keys in their buildings.)

We didn’t have a key to get back into the woman’s apartment, since we didn’t expect to need it; we thought we’d return in the evening when she was back from work. And none of the neighbors were home to help us. So, we had to open the window upstairs in the stairwell and jump out. When you’re 22 you can jump from windows like an action hero and not be injured. Do it when you’re a bit older and you’ll be in back rehab for two years.

In any case, I’m not happy with the backup doorman today. If there had been a fire, we’d all be dead. It was a heavy padlock, and the iron bars over the front door might as well be found at the Florence supermax prison.