Locked in the Bathroom
After dinner this evening we walked into town to meet our middle daughter from work. She started waiting tables at a nearby pub a few weeks ago – her first “proper” job. On leaving the house, our youngest daughter raced down the stairs to join us – never one to miss out on a free drink.
We arrived perhaps half an hour before the end of her sister's shift and bought a couple of drinks while waiting – she eventually joined us, and shared the stories of her shift with us before we set off home together.
The moment I opened the front door, there was a hammering on the downstairs bathroom door, and shouting from within. It took a few moments to gather our senses, and figure out what had happened.
Shortly after we left for the pub, our eldest daughter went to the bathroom. When she came to leave the bathroom, the door lock had jammed – leaving her sitting in the bathroom for over an hour – waiting for us to return home.
I grabbed a screwdriver and began removing the lock from the outside – and quickly discovered the mechanism within the lock was working – but had somehow become disconnected from the bolt. I started talking in terms of having to break the door down, and slammed my body into it several times. It wasn't looking good.
While I took my jumper off, and contemplated retrieving the axe from the shed – to essentially destroy the door rather than the doorframe – my other half gave the lock mechanism one more go – and the door swung open.
I would love to say we were all tremendously understanding about our daughter's plight – sitting in the bathroom for over an hour while we sat in the pub – but we were not at all. After eventually calming down, we agreed that the bathroom door will no longer have a mechanical locking mechanism – it will only have a simple bolt.
First stop tomorrow morning will be the local hardware store, in search of a blank plate to cover where the door handle once was.