::A Geek in Korea::

One of the doors at the school recently got a bit “sticky”. You’d close it, and it would take a twist or two of the knob before you could get it open again. Students trying to reenter the classroom would knock to get back inside. That was kind of nice. Otherwise it was just a small annoyance.

Today when I went to go teach a class in that room, the door was shut. Most of my students had run in front of me and were trying to get into the classroom before I arrived. However, several students were inside the room trying to get out to go home. The door had stuck really well, and no one could open it.

The standard trick involved using a coin to jiggle the lock to open the door. The door wasn’t locked from the inside, and nothing was holding it closed from inside the classroom. The door was just jammed shut really tightly. All the jiggling and pushing on the door I could do did nothing. The students in the classroom were freaking out. My suggestion of “GO OUT THE WINDOW” probably wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Thankfully they knew I was kidding.

The secretary arrived to try to help figure out the situation. I did my part by rounding up the students that were locked out and went to another classroom to start teaching. Let them figure out what’s going on, I’ve got a job to do. Of course, some of my students had no books. Others had their homework looked in the classroom. They were worried I was going to punish them even though it wasn’t their fault. I let them off the hook till the door was opened.

I waited for the other students to show up. Eventually a locksmith arrived. He got the students out, and we moved back into the classroom while he reinstalled a door knob. We all thanked him for coming so quickly, and for working so we could leave the class at the end of the hour.