Re: Dash Hopes: Really that bad?

(The title of this entry is taken from my previously entered subject bar saved in Firefox. Apparently they feel that I may need to type the same title twice and should be spared any inconvenience in doing so.)

My lock is ganked.

A brief aside: I don't know where I first stumbled upon the term "ganked" as an alternative for the less polite "fucked up", but I've always wanted to use it. The only problem is that no one else would understand the term, so I've always held off on using it, until today.

Why is my lock so ganked? Well, thanks to the geniuses that are Oberlin's Resed Department, I have a short little story to tell.

It all happened in early October, back when the land was green and it was safe to go outside without falling into a snowbank and freezing to death. My dorm, Burton, was having a little cookout picnic with a few other dorms, and my roommate, Nick, was enjoying the brisk fall air and the pretty Oberlin campus.

When he returned to our room, he quickly realized that he lost his room key outside. Even worse, he realized that he had left his room key on the paper plate that he was enjoying his meal on, and that his key was now probably inside a trash bag.

After a probably disgusting time digging through the aforementioned trash bag searching for his key, Nick gave up hope of finding it forever. Instead, he did the unthinkable: he reported it to Oberlin Residential and Dining Services.

Let me explain this for a second: despite relying on Oberlin Resed for the last 2.5 years for my room and board, I have found them to be the least responsive, least helpful, least time-efficient organization on the entire Oberlin campus. And this is from a school where my professors sometimes forget to send me the assignments for my finals.

So of course Resed charges Nick the $60-esque dollars for a replacement key and lock. They then give him a spare key to the room so that he can you know, GET IN, between then and when they replace the lock.

So what happens? Does Resed do as they say will and replace the lock as soon as they promise (within the next week) or do they do nothing and let us sit on the problem?

Let's seriously take an educated guess at what happens.

About a month and a half later, on the second day of real snow in Oberlin, a cold November Tuesday (when I have class earlier in the morning), I get a text AND a voicemail from Nick that Resed has (finally) replaced our lock, leaving us LOCKED OUT OF OUR ROOM IN THE COLD AND SNOW.

Because the note that they helpfully left on our door indicates that Nick should go to Resed to get our new keys, Nick goes to Resed to get our new keys. Surprise, surprise, they don't have our keys. Instead Nick has to go down to the Security building to sign off on the new key. And since they only let Nick take HIS key, I also have to go down to the Security office to pick up my new key.

At this point in the story, it is important that you note that we both had keys to our room. Although Nick had the spare key that Resed kept in case of emergencies, we were both perfectly able to open our lock (which was installed well) and get into our room, and able to lock it afterwards to keep our valuables safe.

So when they FINALLY get around to replacing our door's lock, do you think they did a good job of it?

Of course not.

I get back to our room with a new key and a new lock in the door. The new lock is not fitted correctly into the door frame, and as a result it spins around when the key is not completely inserted into the lock. If it spins like this, it is impossible to lock or unlock the door.

At this point, let me assert that this is not the first time that I have had door problems. Oh, no. My freshman year at Oberlin, our door handle broke somehow and the knob would not turn effectively. As a solution, my roommate and I decided to keep the door so that the knob's jam was inside the door, so that as a result you would not have to turn the knob to open the door, but just push on it. It was an incredibly more efficient way of getting into the room, but only if you knew that the knob was completely useless. We of course reported this situation to our RA, but it was never fixed.

So this is my dilemma. Do I report the spinney-lock situation to my RA (an extension of Resed)? I know that if I do so, it will likely never get fixed. If it breaks on me, I believe I will have a worse situation on my hands because Nick and I never reported that they FUCKED UP fixing our lock (which was perfectly functional FOR A MONTH AND A HALF before they decided to 'fix' it) and they will charge us AGAIN for the lock-fixing. Either way results in much more hassle then dealing with an occasionally-spinning, non-functional lock.

So for now I have a lock that spins. But only when I don't insert the key the whole way.

Fantastic.