Earlier this week it was reported that the one man with all the keys at Yosemite National Park was fired, that being the only locksmith, Nat Vince. Don’t worry about Vince he’s already received a number of job offers according to this article. Here
Townhall has some questions about the practicality of keeping a fulltime locksmith on staff at a national park. Here
Who’s gonna turn on the geyser every morning?
He has the only keys to the building with the “Do Not Feed Yogi Bear” signs inside.
NOPE! Lemme stop ya there ! People are stupid! That’s why locksmiths are needed. Changing a lock properly is not always easy. Again people are stupid! People with a bunch of keys is stupid! You might as well just take off all the locks and leave all the doors wide open because govt employees are stupid!Except for the locksmith. He’s ok… unless he too is stupid! In that case, oh well I’ll never be able to go to Yosemite so what do I care? I’m just being STUPID!!!
Yes, people are stupid. That one park has enough specific work to justify a fulltime locksmith seems unlikely. At least if they were good at their job.
By the way: is there some federal or state requirement that this person not just be one or several mechanically adept persons in Maintenance Department aka janitors?
Maybe he could find work at the Panama Canal when we get it back.
Interestingly enough the new modern locksmith specialize in key less entry too. Am I paying for that? Then hell no.
I have keys that will fit any lock in the park including doors.
It’s called a grinder with a 5 inch cutoff wheel and I never went to lock school.
Keep cutting the fat please.
Locksmith, yeah right. He knows how to run a key duplication machine.
Political Patronage exists in every Agency.
This is an illegal “perk” for Senators and Congressmen to provide JOBs for loyal Democrats.
Biden hired thousands of “Recommended” Political personnel over the years.
Some are ghost jobs (jobs that don’t exist) yet the person receives regular Direct Deposit Payment.
Political Patronage is alive and well.
“He was the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.”
…as an ex-firefighter, I can assure you there is an ample supply of ways to open a door very quickly on everything that may show up at the scene, should someone need to be rescued from a toilet.
No locksmith required.
This story was so dumb. The following questions are so easily surmised from it.
1. How do people get “locked into restrooms”?
2. Why does only one guy have the key?
3. Why only one key?
4. Why did he keep it when he left? It’s not his property.
5. If having a key makes one a “locksmith”, doesn’t that make most of the country’s population “locksmiths”?
TheMule
Monday, 24 February 2025, 12:01 at 12:01 pm
“1. How do people get “locked into restrooms”?”
…not defending it, but I’ve found more medical emergency victims in locked bathrooms than you might think.
Some folks go to the bathroom when they are not feeling well, sometimes to vomit or with diarrhea, other times just for a quiet place where they can sit out of sight while they try to shake off a sudden dizziness. Sometimes that dizziness is caused by a reaction to medicine or a heart attack. Even taking a normal, healthy dump with a weak heart may cause a shutdown from vagus nerve stimulation.
If they are lucky, someone sees them on the floor under the stall after they pass out before they die.
Addicts like bathrooms for taking drugs too. Those red dots in the roll of toilet paper you see in a public restroom are from a heroin addict “cleaning” their needle with a quick jab.
Find THEM on the floor too.
And women sometimes miscarry in them. Sometimes the bleeding wont stop. Also an issue with self-abortion.
And people sometimes get assaulted and/or raped in bathrooms, then dumped in a stall when the attacker is done, often semi-to unconscious.
Then there’s homicides.
And suicides.
Sometimes successful, sometimes not, but locked in a bathroom withal.
So lots of reasons and more besides that a person may be locked in a bathroom and unable to get out.
…all that said, Im guessing that Im going to get a cop or fireman a LOT faster than I can get a locksmith.
If its a person down, Im taking the door out.
Fuck your lock.
“I know it can be done because I’ve seen
circular scrape marks on the outside of the doors at the fairgrounds.”
…my introduction to forcible entry came when K-Mart was a going concern with auto shops and I was a newly minted mechanic fresh from vocational school. They had a training facility in Detroit back then, and it was thither I and folks from stores all over the region were sent for a week of learning about cars and life.
K-Mart being K-Mart, they put us up in this cardboard motel on 8 mile (yes, THAT 8 mile, but LONG before Emenem made it famous with his noise). I got an early education in forcible entry there, from the jimmy marks on EVERY DOOR to watching people kicking doors in over drugs and women to every imaginable police type agency breaking in to serve warrants or get drugs or whatnot.
We were a bunch of dumb, young, obviously poor kids (because, y’know, K-Mart) so other than frankly half-hearted attempts to both beg from and sell drugs to us, we were mostly left alone to watch the Fall of Civilization from our lead-paint-peeling, sagging balcony, where I got an unexpected preliminary education in forcible entry that I had no idea at the time would come up again in a somewhat different context after I got a few more years and a few more scars on me.
Funny old thing, life.
…I also got an education in what happens when a strip club bouncer throws a guy (not me!) head first into a fireplug on that same trip, but thats a different subject for another day…
^
Huh.
That was a response to a comment about broken bathroom doors by MJA that she evidently thought the better of while I was tapping, because its just no longer there.
Oh well, the band plays on..
Yeah sorry- I messed up my comment and then thought, F it. I have to go do some stuff. lol
The comment was that some bathroom doors are so shoddy that you can shake them and open them. And that magnets could be used to slide the latches in different directions.
Thanks, MJA, for coming back and letting me know I didnt imagine it. And for making me look less stupid for commenting on a non-existant post, Im usually pretty good at looking stupid without any help…