Commercial 
Here I replaced an old handleset with a modern one. The original set required a door prep that was nonstandard and also left an unsightly footprint on the door. I covered all of that with push plates.
Push Plates
Let’s See Some ID
Last week I got a call from a customer in Bothell who was locked out of his house. I happened to be ahead of schedule so I agreed to squeeze him into my day. “Please get here as quickly as you can,” he said. Of course I would. I always drive like I’m late for my own wedding. This is one reason I leave my logo off of my van.
When I arrived at the house I encountered a pudgy bespectacled guy in his early twenties wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt. He looked a little like Drew Carey in the 1990s. A Tesla was sitting inside the open garage. He pointed to the door he wanted me to open. I asked him for ID. He pulled at both sides his gym shorts and shrugged, indicating he had nothing in that regard. I asked if he’d be able to prove that he lived there when we got in. “Yeah, sure,” he said.
Though he wanted me to go in through the garage, I took my regular walk around the outside of his house looking for the easiest way in. There were no open windows. All doors were deadbolted. I said to him, “I can see you didn’t accidentally let the door close behind you. This house was locked with a key. Did you lose your keys on a jog?” He responded vaguely, “Yeah, something like that.” I don’t like to pry, but the caginess bothered me a little.
I got to work picking the garage door deadbolt. It wasn’t an easy one. As I worked at it, he paced behind me and breathed loudly through a slightly congested nose. Sometimes it seemed like he was sighing impatiently. It was distracting. I turned to look at him and asked, “Have you got a pie in the oven?”
“Huh?”
“You asked me to hurry here and now you seem very anxious to get in.”
He gave me a crooked grin and said, “Oh, I just didn’t want to be waiting outside for a long time.”
I turned back toward the door and continued trying the deadbolt with my lock pick and tension wrench. He got back to pacing and wheezing behind me. But now it felt like he was closer to me and breathing louder. I was getting frustrated with the lock. I couldn’t seem to feel or hear any of the pins set. I became aware of the squeaking of his sneakers on the shiny garage floor. I was sweating. Agitation, annoyance, and discomfort are not especially conducive to good lockpicking. I took a long pause and a breath, hoping to reset. My glasses were fogging up so I took off my mask. I tried at the lock with a different pick. He continued pacing and breathing and squeaking. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned back to him.
“Have you got a copy of the key inside? I’m going to drill and replace the cylinder.” With a working key I would be able to match the new cylinder to it and it would be like nothing had happened. I don’t like using the drill and I especially don’t like doing so before residency has been proven, but I couldn’t take another second of the pacing and the breathing and the squeaking. And the looming! The looming was the worst part of it.
A few minutes later the door was open. Before I even stepped away from the door the customer was trying to squeeze past me to get in.
“Hold on,” I said, putting myself more squarely between him and the door. Before you do anything else, please grab your ID.
“Oh, I don’t have an ID,” he told me.
“What do you mean you don’t have ID?”
He shrugged, “I don’t.”
“OK. Are there any photos of you on wall in here?”
“No, I don’t take photos of myself.”
Sometimes confirming residency is not that straightforward and we have to employ some creative problem solving. “Do you have a Facebook page?” With that, plus a piece of mail he’d received at the house, I would be satisfied.
“No.”
“How are you going to show me that this is your house?”
He shifted from foot to foot, anxious for me to move out of the way so he could get into the house. “I have three computers in the bedroom upstairs. I can show you that I have the password to get into them.”
“That’s not enough,” I said. “I need to see photo ID. What adult doesn’t have photo ID? You have a house. You have a car in the garage. You must have ID.” Frequently when I’m going through this process people offer up what I consider to be unhelpful solutions. A common one is to start listing off the most expensive items in the home, which would be visible through windows or to anyone who has ever visited the house. Another is to offer to call someone I don’t know so they can confirm over the phone that this other person I don’t know should get into the house we’re standing outside. Had he not acted so strangely up to this point, I may have accepted the password thing.
“Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. I can show you the computers.”
At this point I was getting pretty exasperated with the kid, and also nervous that he’d drawn me into something mischievous. I told him, “Look … you said you’d be able to show me that you lived here. I’m beginning to think I’ve helped you commit a crime by getting you into this house. I’m thinking about calling the police here.” I’ve only once called the police on a customer after helping her gain entry to a house, and that was because she refused to pay me. In this case I’d be calling the police on myself for breaking and entering, and I didn’t know what kind of trouble that would cause for me.
He paused for a long moment, looking at the floor. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. Inside the wallet was a passport card with a photo of him looking uncomfortable.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s going on here?”
Then the corners of his mouth curled downward with emotion. “Here’s the thing. I’m really concerned about my privacy. Maybe it’s a little weird.”
“It’s not that weird. I get it. But you have to show me that you live here. Do you have a piece of mail you’ve received here?”
“I have a P.O. box.”
“Okay, if I check the King County Assessor’s website will I find that you’re the owner of this property?”
“I rent.”
“Do you get Amazon deliveries here?”
“No.”
“Is the Tesla out there registered to you? Does it have your address on the registration?”
“If it does, it would have my old address.”
“Look,” I said. “We have a problem here and I really need you to help come up with a solution.”
Another long pause. Then he gestured for me to follow him. We went into the kitchen and he pulled a folder from a kitchen drawer. Inside was a lease agreement that had his name on it and the address of the house.
It wasn’t too many minutes later that I’d fixed the lock to make it work with his old key and I was writing him a bill on one of my two-ply invoice sheets.
He said, “Hey, can you leave my name off that bill?”
“No problem. Here you go.”
He took it and said, “Would you mind if I paid you with a virtual credit card?”
“What’s that?”
He showed me his phone. On the screen there was an image of a credit card. “You can’t swipe it. You have to run the numbers. And I can put any name I want on it.” He could barely conceal how pleased he was with this explanation. I could barely conceal conceal my irritation.
“Hey, you know what’s pretty anonymous? Cash. Have you got any cash?”
As I walked back to my van I carefully inspected the bills he gave me. I was ready to put this weird job behind me and get on to the next one.
Latch Protector on an Aluminum Door
A few months ago I installed this latch protector on these double doors. The door on the left is always locked, so there was no concern about making it awkward to open and close that side. I found the part in a dusty old box in my shop and I thought it was a pretty elegant piece of hardware. I didn’t know where it came from and it was the first of its kind I ever installed. It covered the crack between the doors to protect the latch; it had a collar to protect the cylinder; and it had pins that seated into holes in the inactive door to prevent a burglar from spreading the doors far enough for the latch to come clear of the strikeplate so the door could open. I was also pleased with my own installation. The holes I drilled for the anti-spread pins were precisely placed and no larger than necessary for the pins to slide perfectly in without any rubbing as the door swung shut.
A few months after I installed this, and on the first warm sunny day of the year, the customer called me to say the door wasn’t closing all the way because the pins weren’t seating into their holes. I hadn’t accounted for how the aluminum doors would expand and contract in different temperatures, causing the pins to become misaligned with the holes. That was dumb. I went back and expanded the holes to fix my mistake. Next time I’ll know better, I thought to myself.
Upon further investigation, I find that this product has been discontinued and no manufacturer is currently offering one like it. After this minor adventure I can guess the reason that they make latch guards with anti-spread pins for steel doors but not for aluminum doors: aluminum expands too much in hot weather.
Astragal
Upgrade from simple latch guard to full-door interlocking astragal. Just try and pry your way through that! On second thought, please don’t. Actually, forget I even mentioned it.
Egg on My Face and Love in My Heart
Earlier this week my phone rang while I was eating supper. It was a lockout call in Edmonds and the caller said her landlord had recommended me. I have a regular client in Edmonds for whom I do a lot of work. I reluctantly agreed to go open the door.
Thirty minutes later I was approaching the first Edmonds exit in my van and the phone rang again. She’d gotten in and she wanted to cancel. This happens all the time. It’s the reason I don’t do late-night lockouts anymore. It seems like people treat my drive like a countdown clock; once it starts the race is on and they have to get the door open before I arrive. In their minds, as long as they don’t see me, they don’t owe me anything for needlessly dragging me away from whatever I was doing during my personal time. I groused to her that I was already halfway there. She said, “Well what do you want me to do? Lock myself out again so you can come and open the door for me?” I was angry. I got off the phone with her as quickly as I could without quite hanging up on her.
Two days later my Edmonds client texted me to schedule some work. After setting that up I noticed that the address looked familiar. I found the text exchange from the canceled lockout job and confirmed that it was just a few doors down from there, seemingly in the complex that she manages. So I texted her a message about the dirty trick her tenant had played on me earlier in the week. Except that at the moment I hit the send button, I realized that I had accidentally just texted the dirty trickster and not the landlord. I panicked. I had a chaotic flurry of ideas for how to fix the mistake, mostly absurd. For a brief moment I considered hurling the phone out the window of my van as if it were a live grenade. There really was no follow-up text I could write to save face. Ultimately I settled on sending the very same text to my client. She asked which property the call had come from, making me think she might follow up with the tenant herself. So I decided to do nothing.
An hour or so later the tenant texted to tell me I’d sent the message to the wrong person. Furthermore, she explained in several numbered points why it wasn’t her fault. What did you want me to do, she asked. I treated it like an earnest question and told her in my own numbered points what I wanted:
1) exhaust all other options BEFORE calling me;
2) don’t add insult to injury by deflecting responsibility and being sarcastic;
3) offer to compensate me for the time spent, gas wasted, and miles put on my work van.
At this point she sent a string of texts that I mostly ignored as I worked on a client’s door. When I finally looked at them I saw they had sort of an interesting arc, progressing from defensiveness (it’s not MY fault the handyman locked my door while I was out); to commiseration (I work in sales and it sucks when I go out on a trip and come home empty-handed); to capitulation (OK, how much do you want?).
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to put myself in a position to lose a negotiation with this person. Also, I actually don’t feel good about demanding money from people when I haven’t performed any work, especially when they’re being conciliatory. So here’s what I said:
My favorite charity is the Polaris Project. Think about how much you would want to be paid to leave your house at a moment’s notice and drive toward some destination for 20 minutes, only to turn around and go back home. I can’t hold you to it, but you could make a donation in that amount if you see fit.
Immediately she replied that she loves this organization, which aims to halt human trafficking around the world and aid its victims here at home. Then she sent me a screenshot of a $50 donation she’d just made. Immediately my anger evaporated. I was so happy about this outcome that I matched her donation and sent her my own screenshot. She hearted the text in the way that only iPhone users can do, and it showed up funny on my Android phone. I could not have been more pleased with this exchange.
This isn’t a college application essay and the event didn’t alter the course of my life. But it did reinforce a few notions that I already believed to be true:
1) we need to tell people–frankly but civilly–when their conduct is poor;
2) there’s a lot more to most people than the brief glimpses we catch of them in the moments that our paths collide;
3) I need to be more careful with my phone.
Master Lock Contractor Boxes
If you’re in the Seattle area and have one of these boxes, it might be time to retire it. They’ve figured out how to quickly break into this model. Contractor boxes of any model should be well secured to something solid, out of view from the road, and in place for as little time as possible.
Another quick note on these: if you’re sure you have the right code but it just won’t open, it may be overstuffed. Try squeezing it shut as you push the release switch.
Hardware for the Covid Times
Today I received a promotional catalog from one of my hardware distributors with a bunch of door pulls that are designed to allow users to reduce their contact with door hardware in public spaces. These ones are made by Trimco. My favorite is the foot pull for the restroom door.
As a low-grade germaphobe, I WISH these had been popularized decades ago. Just this week I went into the bathroom of a Mexican restaurant to wash my hands before I ate my lunch and was horrified to find that it only had a hand dryer mounted to the wall. In normal times I might have waited for someone else to come into the restroom so I could awkwardly catch the door with my foot and slip out. But this place was only operating at 25% capacity and I knew I could be waiting for a long time. I don’t want to say how I got out of there, but let’s ust say I didn’t eat a single corn chip.
As a low-level germaphobe who is also a locksmith, I’ll be happy to recommend another qualified professional to get down on the floors of your public restrooms to install a set of these foot pulls.
MailBoss
Today I saw this row of mailboxes that had been plundered by a mail thief. Notice that the second and fifth boxes remain unscathed. They are produced by MailBoss, a Redmond-based company. I believe they make the most secure mailboxes on the market. They’re very difficult to pry open and the locks are hard to pick. I always groan when I show up to replace the lock on a mailbox with no keys and find that it’s a MailBoss mailbox.
These mailboxes are a little pricey compared to other products on the market, but in an area with as much mail theft as we have in and around Seattle, they’re well worth the cost. If you go into their warehouse in Redmond, you can usually score a store return for half price. But please don’t make the clerk open ten boxes in search of a perfectly unblemished mailbox. If you require perfection, new ones are available at many major retailers.
The model I like best is actually called the Mail Boss. It has a door that’s tilted inward when closed, so it’s especially hard to pry open. I believe both the boxes in this video are examples of the Mail Manager.
Hero Mother
Today a customer asked me to tell her the weirdest service call I’ve ever had. There are a lot of candidates, but this is the one that sprung to mind:
It was a hot August afternoon and a woman in southern Bellevue called me from her neighbor’s phone, saying she was locked out of her condo. I took down her address, quoted her a price and an ETA, and fired up my van.
When I arrived at the apartment complex I quickly located the right building and unit but did not find a stranded customer. I walked around for a few minutes and didn’t see her anywhere. Then I called the neighbor whose phone she had used to contact me in the first place. The neighbor came right out and recounted her interaction with the woman. She said, “Yeah, it was weird. She was limping and her arms were all scraped up. And she had two little dogs with her. I’ve never seen her before. I have no idea where she went.” I thanked her, did a sweeping scan of the complex one last time, and walked back to my van to get on with my day.
I was just pulling out of the parking lot when I saw an older woman sitting under a Japanese maple tree with a couple of dogs. I parked the van again and approached her. She gave me a look of happy recognition the moment she saw me. Up close, I could see that the dogs were a dachshund and a Chihuahua. She looked generally disheveled and she wasn’t wearing any shoes. And, like the neighbor said, her arms and legs had been bleeding. She looked kind of like a vagrant.
We introduced ourselves and she escorted me to her door. It was not the address she had given me over the phone, which I pointed out to her. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I misspoke.” I was suspicious. As is routine, I asked her for ID. She lifted her hands, palms to the sky, and told me it was inside. That’s not unusual. People don’t always make sure they have ID on them before they accidentally lock themselves out. But I was already a little dubious about the whole thing and wondering if I should just wish her well and move on. Instead I squinted at her like David Carradine playing the role of a Chinese monk in that old TV show, and thought to pepper her with one last round of questions. She broke pretty easily.
“Why did you get your own address wrong?”
“Well, it’s not really my place,” she said, as if she were confiding in me.
“What?! Then I can’t let you in!” I said, exasperated.
Immediately she realized her error. “Ohhh, nooo! You’ve gotta let me in! Pleeeeease let me in!” she begged.
“I can’t let you in to a property that’s not yours.”
“It’s my daughter’s place. I’m here dogsitting.”
“Where is she? Can we call her?”
“I don’t think so. She’s in Tahiti. And I don’t know her number. It’s in my phone, and my phone is inside.”
This was all plausible, but it didn’t explain why she looked like she’d just rolled out of a dumpster and then gotten into a fight with a bunch of alley cats, which then stole her shoes. I asked her what happened and she told me the story.
“Well, I went out on the balcony with the dogs and I didn’t realize that the sliding door would lock behind me when I shut it. It was really hot up there. It’s right in the sun and the floor was like a griddle. It was burning my feet. I was really afraid the dogs were going to overheat and die. I tried to use the propane tank from the grill to break the glass door but I couldn’t swing it hard enough. I was really scared for the dogs. I was calling for help but nobody came. Finally I dropped the dogs one by one into the bush below. Then I jumped into the bush too. That’s why I’m all cut up. My shoes are inside. Normally I have shoes.”
“Show me this balcony,” I said.
We went around to the back of the building, the dogs scampering along behind her, and she pointed up at a second-story balcony. Underneath it was a large hedge that looked like it had been split in half. I was convinced.
“Is your purse inside the unit?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have an ID in there?”
“Of course.”
“The first thing we’ll do when we get in is go to your purse and grab your ID.”
“Sure! Fine! No problem!”
I got the door open with little effort and the dogs bounded up the stairs inside the unit. My customer followed them up, limping the whole way. As if there was any remaining doubt, she got to the top of the stairs and pointed to her purse. Next to it was a tumbler filled to the middle with red wine. She pulled out her wallet, showed me her ID, and paid me.
“I hope your daughter appreciates you,” I told her before heading down the stairs and back to my van to get to the next job.
Schlage Encode
Schlage has introduced a new keypad lock that doesn’t require an intermediary hub to connect to your wifi. It’s called the Encode. Currently it’s available at Amazon and the big box stores for about $250. Smaller retailers can’t get their hands on it yet. I would wait at least until the end of 2019 before buying one so the manufacturers can work out the kinks, but I’m happy with what I’ve seen so far. The motor sounds healthier than the one found in Schlage’s Connect and Sense models. It also has a more compact design despite the increased functionality. And supposedly it is designed to integrate well with that creepy system that lets Amazon deliverymen walk into your house.
The only negative thing I’ve noticed about it so far is that the sticker with the random factory-assigned user codes is just under the battery cover. On other models this sticker is only accessible if you have a screwdriver; with this one, a visitor to your home could remove that battery cover and photograph the sticker in a matter of seconds. So if you buy this lock, make sure to move that sticker before putting it into commission. Otherwise, it looks like it will be a pretty good lock.