lesson learned

before i begin this story, let me fill you in on my car and her slight defects: all of the locks on my doors, except for one, have broken one by one. they no longer lock or unlock by pushing a simple button, i now have to manually lock or unlock the doors. heaven forbid, right?

i have created some good habits of remembering to always lock my doors because of this. my driver side door being one of them.

when i was filling my car with gas the other day, this good habit back fired on me. whenever i open my door to get out, i automatically and immediately lock it. out of habit, i did exactly that as i was getting out of the car to fill up with gas; leaving my keys, wallet, purse, cell phone and everything else inside my now locked car. luckily, i had my debit card in my hand to pay for gas. after i started pumping the gas, i turned around to get back into my car when i realized what i'd done. first i just stood there in disbelief of the problem i had just created. but it quickly started to sink in, with all sorts of thoughts running through my head. crap! did i seriously just do this? what is my problem? what do i do now? jeff is in utah and nobody i know has a spare key. and even if i had one at home, my keys to my apartment were in my car and our apartment office was closed so getting a key to get into my house from them wasn't an option either. i was beginning to really panic here.

well, one thing to be grateful for was that i wasn't in the middle of nowhere with no help. the employees at the gas station were kind enough to let me use their phone and phone book to call a locksmith. they were even nice enough to attempt at unlocking my car with a wire hanger and ask almost every person who came in if they knew how to break into a locked car. it's odd that i'm saying this, but sadly, no one knew how.

the name of the locksmith i called was '20 minute locksmith' and they guaranteed to be there in 20 minutes. and thankfully, they were. over the phone they informed the gas station employee it would be about $50. i was blown away at how expensive it was just to open someone's door! but i was desperate and had no other options. so when he got there, i asked if he was really going to charge me $50. he looked at me and said, "$50 dollars for the trip out here, and another $50 for the work." um. i'm sorry, WHAT? are you serious? right about now was when i was feeling like an idiot for making such a stupid mistake...

long story short, he assured me he wasn't trying to rip me off and that he was being completely honest. he also showed me his previous invoices and told me that he was 95% positive my insurance would cover this expense. but i still didn't know that they would and $100 is not a drop in the bucket for us! so he told me we could wait another 5-10 minutes, pretend like he arrived later than the 20 minutes and call his boss to see if he could cut me a "deal". i gladly agreed in hopes that this would lower the price and i called my insurance company in the mean time. but with it being after hours, i never reached them.

after 5 minutes of waiting, he told me he could lower the price to 90 bones instead of 100. well gee. thanks, sir.

so i learned my lesson: locksmiths are a rip off!! it is ridiculous they can charge that much in my opinion. i had no idea. the sad thing is they can get away with it because the poor unfortunate soul who locked their keys in their car has no one else to turn to. jerks.

i have yet to call my insurance company to see if they will cover the expense. jeff thinks they will and i hope they will. in the mean time, i'm trying not to be such an idiot.