A few days ago, I stopped into a market to pick up about a dozen items. I was in the Canned Meats aisle when it occurred to me that I oughta hit the Men's Room before I left. I didn't have to go right that second but I sensed that I would before I got home.
The men's room had a combination lock on the door. You had to ask someone who worked there for the code. So I asked someone there for the code and they didn't know. So I asked someone else there for the code and they didn't know. So I asked someone else there for the code and they didn't know. So I asked someone else there for the code and they didn't know but they said, "You'd better ask the manager" and they told me where to find him.
I found the manager and he said he was sorry but he didn't know the code to the men's room either. I said, "Well, someone must know it." The manager kind of half-chuckled and said, "Louie knows it but he doesn't work here anymore."
Then he explained to me. They had an assistant manager named Louie. Louie was a problem and they told him he was fired. Louie was pissed about this. He left but before he left, he reprogrammed the doors to the public men's room and ladies' room, just to cause trouble. I said, "There must be some sort of master back-up code for them."
The manager said, "There is…but he changed that, too." I asked how long ago this was done and he said it was going on ten days. "I've phoned him a couple of times and demanded he give us the new codes but he said if we want them, we have to hire him back."
By now, I was way deeper into this story than I cared to be but I was also needing the men's room more and more. I asked, "What about the key? There's a key lock on those doors, too." The manager said, "Yeah, well, nobody here seems to know where the key is. We didn't use it much…once or twice a year when some homeless person would lock themselves in there for an hour or two. I've searched and I'm not sure Louie didn't take all the keys, too."
I asked if I could use whatever men's room the employees there used and he said sure and walked me back into the "authorized personnel only" section to show me where it was. On the way, he told me, "I've called the company that installed the locks and they're going to send someone out with a master key. They say once they get the doors open, they can reprogram the locks.
"I think they're coming tomorrow. I hope so because I have to do the final January accounting and I can't finish without one ledger that I don't have. It disappeared the same time Louie left and I called him and asked here the hell it was. He said it was in the ladies' room along with a couple crates of FatBoy ice cream sandwiches."