Woman Battles Parents Over Who Should Pay Locksmith After Lock Mishap

A woman seeks advice from the Reddit community after finding herself locked out of her own bedroom and at odds with her parents over who should pay the locksmith bill.

She explains in her post that she lives at home with her parents, pays rent and has had long-running issues with her siblings’ children entering her room and causing chaos.

“Her kids kept going into my room while I was out and kept making a mess,” she writes about when her sister and her two children lived with them in 2020. “One time I had cake in there and it got crushed EVERYWHERE. Another time, I came back to nail polish painted onto my floor.” None of the damage, she adds, was ever fixed or replaced.

Later that year, new COVID-19 restrictions changed the family dynamic again. One of her other sisters was living alone with her two kids, and because of her mental health, their parents asked the woman to move in with her for a month.

She agreed, but only with one condition. “I agreed but only if I got a lock put on my door due to the kids,” she explains, noting that she spent £100 ($135) for the lock while her parents chipped in £70 ($94). “It’s a number lock, like the kind you see on staff rooms.”

The lock, however, proved more trouble than she imagined. In 2023, one of her nephews played with the buttons until the code no longer worked. “Somehow I was able to fix it following a YouTube decoding video,” she says.

Though she managed to keep her room secure for a while, the problems didn’t stop. “A couple of times since I’ve been locked out of my room but been able to somehow unlock it again,” she shares, explaining that she eventually started leaving the door unlocked most of the time.

But leaving it unlocked invited a new problem. Her nephew, who lives in the same home, would repeatedly barge into her room. “He kept barging into my room just to be a pain in the a–,” she writes.

To keep him out, she resorted to locking her door from the inside, then unlocking it again whenever she left. This solution also helped with a broken door handle that caused the door to slam when the window was open.

Then came the moment everything unraveled. “A couple days ago, I forgot to unlock. So now I’m locked out,” she explains. Despite hours of trying, the lock would not budge. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Inside the room are her essential items: “All my meds are in there, my laptop which I need for uni, my clothes, etc.,” she shares.

She turned to her dad, who was at work, and waited for him to call a locksmith. “He says he will today. Brilliant, I think. It’s getting fixed today, hallelujah,” she recalls. But instead of a quick fix, her father told her the job would be considered an emergency and therefore costlier.

When she explained how badly she needed her belongings, her dad put the responsibility back on her. “He says it’s going to be more expensive for me,” she writes. Her mother initially disagreed. “But yesterday, my mum said she thinks they should pay,” she explains. “Today, she’s now siding with my dad. We’re at a standstill.”

Frustrated and unable to access her medication or schoolwork, the woman turned to Reddit for judgment. “Who do you think should pay?” she asks readers.

In the comments, some people questioned the choice of lock in the first place. “INFO who picked an electronic lock for an interior door in the first place? If you’re repeatedly locked out of your room why didn’t you replace the lock prior to this?” one user wrote.

The woman quickly clarified that it was not her decision. “It’s a mechanical number lock and my dad chose it,” she says, adding that she only wanted a simple sliding lock that kids couldn’t reach. “My dad thought I should get one more secure. It’s unfortunately too secure.”

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She also explained why she hadn’t replaced the lock sooner. “I didn’t get it replaced because I was still able to access my room,” she admits. Despite repeated problems, she managed to find temporary solutions — until this final lockout left her stranded.

Now, she remains locked out of her room and locked in a disagreement.