Like a lot of things, safe cracking isn’t as easy as Hollywood makes it seem. Locked in a cupboard in one of my labs is a safe – it’s been there since before I started in this job – and no-one else knew it was there. Or what was in it. Or what the combination might be.
With the students away for half-term, work has been pretty quiet this week. Unfortunately my lab was overrun by workmen, meaning I couldn’t actually get in there and get on with stuff. So a colleague and I decided it was about time to take a look inside this mysterious box of, erm, mysteries. As we weren’t able to work on it in Physics, we carried it up the stairs to Biology to take a crack at it there, which felt strangely surreal in itself. The lift was out of order, in case you were wondering why we did it the hard way.
Suffering from Ocean’s Eleven related-delusions, the first technique we tried was the stethoscope. The plan was to very slowly turn the dial and listen for the clicks as we hit the right number. This was a bit trickier than expected as the dial kept sticking, and then making clunking noises as it came unstuck, so we gave up after about 15 minutes.
With subtlety proving fruitless, brute force was next up. We turned the safe upside down and took a hammer and chisel to the hinge bolts. A few swift blows on each and them dropped out. We exchanged a glance – was it really going to be that easy?
No, was the answer. We applied a screwdriver and some leverage to the door, but even with the hinges disassembled it still wouldn’t budge, most probably because the locking bolt went all the way across the inside door.
Lacking any plastic explosives, our next tactic was to consult the collective wisdom of internet for advice, but the only helpful thing we found was the phone number of the company who made the safe. So we gave them a call and told them the serial number that was written on it. In return they told us that they had the combination, but they couldn’t tell us what it was over the phone. That’s fair enough I guess, but again it proved that this wasn’t going to be easy.
Before they’d release the combination to us, they’d need a request in writing, on paper with the college’s letterhead, along with my signature and that of a manager. The first bit was easy, but as it was the holidays, most managers were on annual leave. Starting with our line manager and working our way up the hierarchy, we visited locked office after locked office, until we began to suspect that we were the highest ranked people in the building at that time. Finally we got to the vice-principle’s office, and thankfully he was actually there. So we got his signature and sent the fax on its way. Now we’re just waiting for the safe company to get back to us.
What glittering secrets await us in the dark obscurity of the safe’s forbidden interior? If it’s something awesomely cool, then I shall finish the tale here on this blog. If it’s something fantastically crap or even worse – it’s empty – then I shall never mention this again…
