What I learned at work tonight...

[Tog]

Those little flip latches on hotel room doors... You know, the stiff metal ones you can only flip from the inside and only let the door open a small crack...

They don't work. When the cop kicked in the door, the screws bent and the door flew open so hard the door stop got shoved through the wall. From the looks of it, a good hip check would have done it. If the door isn't shut all the way, like with the main lock, just about anyone could get in. :o

[farmerjumperdon]

Those flip latches are easy to override. I found out one night when one latched on me. I had closed the door (from the outside) and the vibration caused it to move just enough that it engaged. When I came back to my room, the door would not open. The desk sent up the security guard and he used a piece of fairly stiff plastic (like a credit card) to pop the swing latch. Granted, he needed me to use the key to get the door open a couple inches; but the point is that the swing latch is easily overridden.

Bottom line though is that any "normal" door can be kicked in pretty easily. Unless it has some pretty hefty locking pins on BOTH sides, and jams that are significantly heftier than "normal" a well placed kick is as good as a key to a burglar. Though not as quiet.

[weatherc]

As a friend of mine once told me:

"Locks are only there to keep honest people honest."

[mickal555]

Yeah they had this on myth busters... he(jamie) could break all the locks after a coupple of goes...

[Maksutov]

Those little flip latches on hotel room doors... You know, the stiff metal ones you can only flip from the inside and only let the door open a small crack...

They don't work. When the cop kicked in the door, the screws bent and the door flew open so hard the door stop got shoved through the wall. From the looks of it, a good hip check would have done it. If the door isn't shut all the way, like with the main lock, just about anyone could get in. :oThat sounds kind of rough. Were you able to make bail?

[TriangleMan]

That sounds kind of rough. Were you able to make bail?
That's sort of what I was thinking. Forget about the lock . . . why did a cop kick down the door? :eh:

[dvb]

As a friend of mine once told me:

"Locks are only there to keep honest people honest."

Or as I like to say, a lock only keeps the honest person out.

[HenrikOlsen]

Bottom line though is that any "normal" door can be kicked in pretty easily. Unless it has some pretty hefty locking pins on BOTH sides, and jams that are significantly heftier than "normal" a well placed kick is as good as a key to a burglar. Though not as quiet.
And don't forget that most doors are relatively thin plywood on a frame, kick the door wrong and you won't have an open lock, you have a hole in the door with your foot sticking through.
Pull the foot out and you can unlock the door easily.

[Jeff Root]

What I'm wondering is... who pays for the door?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Tog]

Basically, if you visit a hotel and are staying for more than one night, make sure you leave something in the room indicating you haven't left yet. Other wise the assistant manager may decide you've left and check the room out, not realizing that you offerd it to friend that night, casuing some confusion when the desk person sees the friend go into a room that is not supposed to occupied. Now, the friend, being really drunk, may not hear the phone ringing, or the desk clerk knocking on the door to see if there is really someone in the supposedly empty room. When the desk clerk opens the door with a pass key and finds the flip latch in place, he is likely to call the main manager, who also know nothing about what the asistant manager did who says to call the police and if they fried won't open the door, to kick it in.

No idea who pays for the wall. The doors are solid wood and the frames are steel, so I think it might be hard to break it down if it's locked properly, I was just amazed at how little that other latch actually did. So was the officer.

[mugaliens]

What I'm wondering is, "What were you doing in Denny's at 4am?"