No matter how careful you may be, there will more than likely come a time in your life when you realise you’ve locked yourself out of your business. Not so bad if there are other co-workers around to let you in with their own keys, but a nightmare if you work alone, or share a key between several people. If you ever find yourself locked out of your place of work and aren’t sure what steps to take, take a look at the tips below.
1. Think things through
Although you might panic at the idea of being locked out, Business Locksmith Services advises to try to keep calm and think things through rationally. Do you know where you might have misplaced your key? Does anyone — a trusted neighbour or another member of staff, for example — own a spare key for instances like these? Do you believe your keys may have been stolen? All of these questions are important when it comes to making the decision of what to do next.
2. Call a locksmith
No matter whether your keys have been stolen, lost, or you can see them on your kitchen table through your window, if you’re locked out and you don’t have a replacement key, you’re going to need to call a locksmith. There’ll be no need to wait around. A locksmith can either help you gain entry to your office by picking the lock (should your key be inside), or will immediately cut you a new key of any type without requiring the original. Bear in mind that replacing a key will come at a cost, which usually varies depending on the type of key you need cut, the time of the day you require it, and sometimes even your location.
3. Consider your options
There are certain things to take into consideration during your meeting with a locksmith. It may sound drastic, but if you have reason to believe your keys have been stolen, you might want to change the locks in your front and back doors for security purposes. Otherwise, if you’ve just misplaced your keys in a public place, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will track you down and use your keys to break in, so keeping the same locks should be fine. The same goes for if you’ve locked your keys inside of your home, and the bonus for you is that you’ll now have two keys, which is always useful.
4. Prepare for the future
Even if you’ve made a vow to be extra careful with your keys after getting locked out of your workplace for the first time, there’s no telling whether you might make the same mistake twice. For this reason, if you haven’t already had your key duplicated, now is the time to do so. A locksmith can use a key blank to do this and it’s ready fast. It’ll save a whole lot of fuss in the future if you’ve got a backup key somewhere out of the building that you can access if the same situation arises.
