When Awesome Security Becomes Too Much Security

Today I learned that it is never a good idea to have invested in a ginormous amount of security and no backup plan B to cover your own ass. As is the case with any other day, I found myself in the office working extra hours to get caught up. A new design recruit was with me today because he is scheduled to start work with me on Tuesday. He wanted to come in and take a look at the office in advance so I brought him along.

Because it is a weekend, and most sane Canadians who are not work-a-haulics like myself do not work on weekends (especially long weekends), the office building is in lock-down mode, with access only to limited managers like myself. Let me paint a picture of how the office works on weekends. The main office door on the ground floor opens during off-hours such as this, with an electronic fob. From there, stairs take you to the appropriate floor (in my case the 3^rd floor) and another door, also with fob access needs to be opened in order to reach the hallway in front of my main office door. Both the door at the stairway and my main office doors are rigged up with their own (2 different, that is) security alarm systems which activate if the doors are left open for too long during the off hours. Bathrooms are in the hallway, in between these 2 security systems, as opposed to inside of the office.

So after a few hours of working, my new recruit decided that he was ready to leave and go explore some of downtown Toronto RIGHT when I decided to go to the washroom. So I come out of the washroom and I see him in the hallway waiting for me to ask to borrow my camera… at that point, my face turns white… as I realize that we are both in the hallway…and my camera that he wants to borrow is in the office on my desk, in my purse, alongside all my keys to the office and even to my apartment and my cell phone and my wallet and anything valuable to me…is in the office….and I can’t remember if I unlocked the auto-locks. SHIT. Shawn, did you close the door? – Yes…... SHIT.

We were SOOO locked out. No way in, no way to call anyone (my phone is inside and with the existence of address books in the phone, I’ll be damned if I actually know anyone’s phone numbers by heart), no money to go anywhere (wallet inside) and nowhere to go anyway….cause I don’t know where anyone nearby lives and the keys to my place were locked inside. Hhmmmm I think back to the days when I refused to own a cellphone. That was just over 3 years ago….how did I survive? hahaha

So we sat down on the floor in the hallway trying to figure out what to do. Looking back, THANK GOD this guy chose to stop and ask me for the camera before going…had he left without doing so and left me there by myself, I would have been ridiculously screwed. I would have been walking around knocking on doors asking for someone to take me in for the next 2 nights, considering that Monday is a holiday so people won’t arrive at the office till Tuesday. Oh yes, I was in a Royal Tiffle ladies and gents.

He had quarters in his pocket so I told him to go out and find a payphone with a phone book and call a locksmith. I had to stay behind to be able to open the door to the building for him downstairs….easier said than done. Why? Because if I close the door at the top of the stairs, which I explained earlier requires a fob (on my keychain locked inside), I’d be locked out of the 3^rd floor and be even more screwed. So ok, I will leave my shoe in the door upstairs and wait for him at the bottom of the stairs to open that door when he gets back from the payphone….solid plan right? WRONG. Again, if that door is opened for too long, the alarm is triggered..

So what do I do? He leaves to call a locksmith and every 5 minutes I put a shoe in the door and RUN MY ASS OFF down 3 stories, which is actually 6 flights of stairs to check to see if he is there and then, if he’s not (which happened 3 goddamn times), run back up those same 6 flights of stairs and get back to the door to close it before 45 seconds passes and the entire building’s alarm system goes off. That’s right…when was the last time you tried to run up and down 6 flights of stairs in 45 seconds while hearing warning beeps coming from an alarm system that you really don’t want going off? LOL

I didn’t need the extra workout or the feeling like my heart was going to explode multiple times but in the end it worked and when he finally came to the door, it was with a locksmith. $250 later I was home free, sitting at my desk on the phone with a friend laughing about the whole thing.

So what did I learn? 2 things: (1) The security in our building is AWESOME and I won’t EVER have to worry about people breaking in after-hours….and there is the realization that by investing in so much security, I may have been a tad on the paranoid side. Hey, at least it works. (2) I have suddenly found the need to attach a bracelet or something that will attach the keys to me at ALL times.

What a day.