We attended a Balwyn lockout this week where the occupant got just a little bit too clever with his emergency key stashing. Previously he had hidden an emergency key under a pot plant…but he was always worried that was the first place a thief would look. So instead of putting it UNDER the pot plant, he put it IN the pot plant.
- Not hanging off the branches.
- Not hanging off the leaves.
- He buried it in the dirt of the potplant.
Now this plan would have work out fine but for three factors he overlooked.
- If you are going to have an emergency key stashed in a pot plant, best if the pot plant is not on your front step, where people can see you stashing it.
- If you are going to bury a key…. don’t bury it directly into the dirt…. wrap it first.
- Flatmates who lose keys might rely on the emergency key instead of replacing their own.
When we attended his premises his front door lock was jammed and he could not get his regular key to work. Try as he might, it would not budge. He had gone looking for his emergency key only to find it had disappeared from the pot plant. In a panic he called us and we got to work.
The reason the front door would not open soon became clear. The deadbolt mechanism was full of dirt from someone opening it over and over with a dirty key. Our new client bolted inside to see if he had also been burgled…. but it turned out the perpetrator was just a flatmate who had lost his key as opposed to a robber who had seen where the spare key was kept.
Our new client has wisely found a better place to stash the emergency key and we cut him a couple of spares to give his flatmate.
