Keys

Something silly happened to some people down the hall from me yesterday. Apparently they have a problem with draftiness blowing their door shut. One of them got locked out that way the day before. When you get locked out, what you do is go to the area desk and they give you a spare pair of keys, which you have to return in two days. So the first person got locked out, borrowed the spare keys, and hadn't returned them yet. Yesterday, they both step outside the door at the same time, neither one with their keys. The spare keys are also in the room. The wind locks them out again... so they go to the area desk together. The area desk only has one set of spare keys for each room. Incidentally, this means they are now locked out of the whole building. It's not hard to get back in though because people go in and out all the time. This is when they came into my room and told the whole story to my roommate, additionally revealing that they had some ice cream out and would really like to get in and save it.

Now if I got myself into that situation I wouldn't have any clue what step to take next, but apparently the RAs have further solutions to this; unfortunately, the RA and FA weren't in. Luckily, the FA passed right by our window at that moment and called up to my roommate, who excitedly told him what was going on. He went with the locked-out people to "knock on every RA's door in Earl" or something like that. I returned to my instant messaging with LS. A minute later, Dancing Physicist appears outside the window and stares up pointedly, so I open my window and he simply says "conversation please." (There's a backstory to that but it's not important.) I go downstairs to let him in and go sit in this little room next to the door that has no apparent purpose, but is always open and contains a table and chairs. We begin talking... and after a few minutes, the FA and the locked-out people appear. They come into the room and the FA unlocks a box on the wall that has more keys in it. We watch in interest, and when they go upstairs I explain to Dancing Physicist what's happening. Momentarily they return. The FA puts the keys back, and asks one of the no-longer-locked-out people how the ice cream tastes. "Good," she says.