For all that is benevolent... (ranty)

[Trayol]

...use your brain; that shriveled, oxygen starved organ between your ears.

My Uni's Rec Center put in new digital locks 6 weeks ago. The Administrative Staff put up signs before last semester ended telling every patron about the new locks and that padlocks would no longer be allowed as of last Friday. The multiple signs also told how to lock and unlock the digital locks. Apparently all of this forewarning was for naught, as it seems that every time I work I have to deal with at least 4 people an hour with lock issues.Today I had to deal with:

-I've had several people claim defective locks on their locker, when in reality they probably just put their combo in wrong.
-People get pissy when their lock gets cut, knowing full well that they would not be allowed and would be cut off lockers.
-People upset over not finding open lockers when there are plenty of free lockers just down the hall
-People who don't close their lockers properly, causing them to jam when locked.
-People obviously ignoring the semester and annual rental locker signs and being upset when the locker's owner comes in and wants their stuff out.

I probably won't be as irritated in the future when the patrons finally open their minds to the new changes that they know about. Although I did like the one patron who willingly admitted to being an idiot and forgetting his code.

[Polenicus]

We have similar locker woes where I work.

The BIGGEST issue is end of semester.

There are two different types of locker rental: Semester and Term. A Semester gets you that locker for the three month session, a Term gets you the locker for the full Fall and Spring sessions.

Now, when they get their locker rentals, it gets spelled out very clearly: Your locker rental ends at the end of the SEMESTER, NOT at the start of the next.

Lots of students decide, for whatever reason, to rent their lockers as two seperate semesters, rather than one term rental (Probably to save a little cash). However, if you do that, you CANNOT leave your stuff in your locker over Christmas, because the instant the Semester is over, that locker is reassigned. So every Christmas we tromp around cutting off dozens of locks. And then come the start of the Spring Semester, bewildered students wander in wondering what happened to their stuff.

The WORST, however, is over the summer, when we prepare for the new Fall Semester. Because, among our students it appears customer that once your classes are over, and it's time to leave, you clear out your locker, pack up your stuff, lock your locker and leave. These are locks belonging to the students, by the way, we don't have keys or combinations to them.

Last summer we cut over 1,000 locks off. And the majority of the lockers were filled either with junk, unwanted textbooks, or were completely empty. These people were NEVER going to return here, yet they felt the need to lock their lockers up one last time, forcing us to cut the blasted things off. We destroyed three sets of bolt cutters through metal fatigue, just from cutting locks.

The sad part is, most of these locks are JUNK. I can break them with my bare hands (But usually don't, as I could end up damaging the locker itself). Even the ones with tempered, hardened loops usually have junky, easy-to-break mechanisms. So we ALSO get tons of locker break ins during the year, the time when we actually WANT these locks in place and functioning.