Back in my Black Belt days, I spent a fair amount of time
reminding people that two data points do not constitute a trend. In case you’re wondering, you need six data
points for that. But, when you find
yourself in the same incredibly rare situation more than once, it’s hard not to
wonder if something bigger is going on.
Eight years ago I started a new job that happened to come
with an office (at least for the first year).
One day shortly after I started I put a conference call on speaker, and
closed my door so I wouldn’t disturb anyone.
When the call was over I walked over to open my door, but the door
wouldn’t open. Hoping this could be
solved simply, I IM’d a coworker and asked him to come talk to me. He tried to open the door from the outside
and thought I was playing a joke on him.
He called building services for me and kept up a play by play over
IM. This was not terribly useful. Case in point: about 30 seconds after I
witnessed a ceiling tile mysteriously slide to the side and a pair of legs
dangle from above, I received a message stating, “They’re coming in.” My new office mate walked over to the door,
flipped the lock, and seemed genuinely surprised when the door wouldn’t open. Did he really believe I hadn’t tried that? While I don’t remember how long it took to
resolve, I do recall that it took two workers—one on the inside and one on the
outside—and full removal of the door knob and lock, to open the door.
I was running about two minutes late yesterday morning, trying
desperately to make up time. When I
finally made it to my door, the handle just spun. I checked the locks, thinking maybe I’d
missed something. But no, it wasn’t the
lock, and the door wouldn’t budge. I
immediately called downstairs, explained my situation, and waited for a porter
to come to my rescue. A knock on the
door came a few minutes later. For what
it’s worth, it’s very strange to have someone knock on your door and not be
able to open it. I slid a key out to him
and he let himself in. He quickly
assessed the situation and called someone else.
It was less than twenty minutes from the time I attempted to leave until
I finally made my exit, but they were a rather strange twenty minutes. I may have checked that the doorknob was
functioning a handful of times yesterday afternoon.
