Karma's a bitch

About four months ago or so I had a minor brain fart and failed to fully lock the secure safe at work. It was behind a locked door and nothing happened, but nonetheless it was a minor security violation. As penance I was supposed to organize the secure safe, which has been a rat's nest of garbage for a long time. Everyone acknowledged that most of what was in there could be shredded--but nobody ever bothered.

And neither did I. I intended to, at some point, but never got around to it. More after the jump.

Today, I paid for it. The lock on that safe is, like most of the contents, garbage. It's an outmoded design, and is almost 20 years old. And today, it decided it had had enough. I opened it to put in a document, and when I went to close, it wouldn't lock. I could close it just fine, but nothing I could do would convince the thing to actually lock.

As such, of course, it was no longer secure. And as long as it wasn't secure I couldn't leave the room. I called the lock company; they said I'd need a locksmith. Interesting, since I can't let a locksmith into the secure room as long as the secure safe is open, and since I can't close the safe...

I called the locksmith. He wasn't there. I left a message. The girl says, "Now, are you sure you'll be at this number? Because I don't want to leave him a number and then you're not there."

"I can't leave this room."

"Are you sure?"

"Just give him the number."

Since I'm bored and waiting for the locksmith to call, and can't leave the room, I decided to start going through the safe. Thankfully, one of the guys who works in the office brought in a beer. I got through about half of the top drawer (I'd never even opened the bottom drawer) before the locksmith called.

It's an outmoded lock, he says. They haven't made parts for that in years, he says. There's nothing we can do, he says; you'll have to get a new one. Make sure you get an XO-9.

Later I find out an XO-9 probably costs around $2500.

Now, this is not my fault. Just like losing the keys to the squadron's pickup truck was not my fault. But, because I found the keys (I kicked them one morning while walking on the flight line), it just seems like I must have lost them. And because the lock broke while I was in the safe... well, you get the picture. Like I said, karma's a bitch.

I managed to get all the contents out of the safe, went through them, took them over to a nearby base agency staffed with former squadron members who are friendly with us. As long as we cleaned out the safe enough that they could keep a laptop in there, they'd let me store our stuff in there.

Well, by the time I'd been through it all, and shredded most of it (we had things in there from 1995. A whole damned decade!), I'd condensed two stuffed drawers into about five file folders. And spent over an hour shredding. And tearing the staples off the corners of pages, so my fingers are raw. I didn't get home until seven (in case you're wondering why there's no fifth Katrina post). And next week, I get to figure out how to pay for a new safe lock.

Karma. Bitch.