Morning At The Bar

Break-in Blues

 

This happened a while ago, but it stands out in my mind as a shining example of, well, I don't know exactly what, but here it is. . .

 

One fine San Francisco morning, a safe company in SF subcontracted me to hurry over to a well- known bar after a break-in. As often happens, the burglars' forcible safe-opening attempt hadn't gone well.The damage they did to the safe made it unopenable by normal means. It was obvious that the burglars hadn't known the first practical thing about forcibly opening even a lightweight box.

 

The other part of their misfortune was that the object of their attention happened to be a lot more than a lightweight box. They had tangled with a Hermann round door chest. This was a made-in-San Francisco burglary resistive chest. Its main claim to fame was, "never successfully burglarized." I don't know if that claim was accurate, but if it wasn't, it wasn't, too much of a stretch of truth. Hermann round door chests were and still are very tough propositions for burglars.

 

The erstwhile safecrackers had laid siege to a unit that was set into a surrounding waist-high block of rough-poured concrete. Their attacks, what with hammering, prying, dial-smacking, and so on, were a testimonial to, not to mention a classic showcase of their lack of safe opening how-to knowledge.

 

 

 

Hermann Safe of San Francisco was once well-known for making burglary-resistant round door safes. One of Hermann's claims to fame was that in their day, none of their cannon breech models had ever been successfully burglarized. These safes were once very common fixtures at businesses in and around San Francisco

 

 

I arrived just after eight. A small crowd of edgy barflies was milling around on the sidewalk near the still-locked front door, waiting for the police to finish investigating and the owner to open their watering hole. The edgy patrons all relied on their 6am shots and beers to kick start their respective business days, and the investigation had delayed the morning tee-off by at least a couple of hours.  

The bar owner opened the door to my knock, let me in, then went back to what he'd been doing; running around, picking things up, sweeping broken glass, and stopping every minute or so to heap invectives on a helper.

 

Between diatribes he showed me around:

 

The burglar(s) had gained entry through a back door via pry bar, then went to all the usual places: office, not much there, bar room, game and vending machines. There was an morning opening till in the register, then whatever jackpot awaited whoever was willing to tear the vending machines open. When the burglars found the safe they must have figured the jackpot was inside it, and made all the more or less standard "Know-Nothing" moves, all involving a hammer.

 

The safe was a 1940s-vintage Hermann unit. It was a round door that operates like a cannon breech. Opening the combination lock allows the user to rotate the door until a set of steel tabs (commonly known as lugs) on the door cleared mating lugs in the door frame. At that point the door could be swung upward like a submarine hatch. Such safes are known in the industry as lug door chests.

 

Hermann lug door safes were tough cookies, then and now. Lug door chests were designed to resist prying, pounding, drilling, torching, and explosives like nitroglycerine. The bar burglars were woefully under-equipped; the safe hardly knew it was under attack. Often in attempted safe burglaries the work transcends simple crime for profit, instead becoming a self-imposed Machismo Challenge. When erstwhile safecrackers fail miserably, as in this bar burglary, they often get angry and vindictive, again typical.

 

Thus, when a stupid steel box casts aspersions on you and your machismo by making a fool of you and your crew, you do what comes naturally: You start channeling Mighty Hulk.

Smash, break, twist, pound break whatever sticks up, break the glass in all the video machines, throw bar supplies around, tip over bar stools, and in general show your displeasure by creating a huge mess.

 

Trashing a premises after failing at safe opening is infantile but common behavior. I remember thinking it was lucky they hadn't smashed the big old mirror running the length of the bar's back wall. Maybe they just hadn't gotten around to it when they called quits. Or maybe they were superstitious.

 

After assessing the damage I got to work. First the safe had to be opened so the owner could get yesterday's money out, then it had to be repaired.

 

Despite the damage done to the safe, the opening part went quickly and easily. It was easier and safer to remove the heavy round steel door from the safe and repair it on the floor, where there was more room and better light.

 

The repair work was going okay, but I needed a decision from the owner about one aspect of the repair, so I asked, "Do you want me to replace this handle? It will cost an additional $XX."

 

The mere thought of adding more money to what this break-in had already cost seemed to have set the owner off. Upon hearing my question, the owner stopped mid-stride. Without answering me, he went behind the bar to the cash register, opened the drawer and snatched up a handful of ones. He came back around the end of the bar, crumpling the bills in his hand into a wad as he walked over to where I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with the safe door.

 

I've worked around distraught, angry people before. I knew his emotions had to be at flood tide. All understandable, excusable even, considering his plight. But then he did something inexcusable: He loomed over me and shouted, "You want more money? Here, take the rest! You might as well finish cleaning me out!" opening his clenched fist over my head and letting the bills flutter down on me and his safe door.

 

To say the least, I was surprised. I hadn't gone there to be his lightning rod, especially in such a public and humiliating way. The barflies went dead silent as they waited to see how I would handle the owner's display.

 

Seething, I weighed my options, decided, then quietly began a fast and perfunctory reassembly of the parts I'd removed, with few if any worries about exact parts placement or any fine-tuning for optimal future operation.

 

As far as I was concerned, the safe only had to lock once more. The moment I knew it would, I gathered my tools and put them in my case. Last, I carried the heavy safe door back to the waist-high concrete block behind the bar that held the safe body and carefully replaced it without reattaching the hinge.

 

Satisfied that it not only worked on the new combination I'd set but that it would also lock properly, I rotated the door to its locking position then gave the dial several turns to scramble the wheels and lock the unit. Turning to the owner, who seemed to have already forgotten, I said, "You don't owe anything for this visit." Next I picked up my case and left.

My original intent had been to heave the safe lid through the large mirror over the cash register, but it was way too heavy for such histrionics.

 

After putting my tools in my truck and rolling out of there, I called the people who had subbed me on that job. When the dispatcher answered I gave her a brief thumbnail of the incident, finishing with, "If that guy calls and wants me to return, I'm not going, not today, not tomorrow, not never. You'll have to send someone else or tell him to find someone on his own."

 

The dispatcher said "okay." I hung up and kept driving. Minutes later the dispatcher called back, saying, "He just called. He was super-apologetic, says he was too upset by the break-in to think straight. He says to please call him, he'll make it up to you if you'll just go back and finish the job."

 

I figured he'd do that, but my mind was made up. He wasn't going to make it all better with crocodile tears, more money, and a show of penitence. This time I would exercise my option to not serve this guy. I never went back.

 

As an independent business operator I can indulge myself and do things like that whenever I feel like it. You'd think that would mean I don't have to hold still for any of the rude treatment I'd just been subjected to, but in the course of my career I've walked away from very few jobs.

While it's true enough that I don't have to be a doormat for customers I meet, it's also true that if I gathered up my ball and catcher's mitt and left every time I felt insulted by a rude customer, in no time at all I'd have no business. Some people just live rude.

 

While an immediate punch in the nose would have been more apropos, I definitely wasn't going down that road.

 

I've had shouters, screamers, whiners, and super-rude clients, but the dollar-sprinkling was a first. However, when I looked at it and factored how it fit into the Grand Scheme of Things, that little contretemps qualified as no more than "super-rude." Certainly not worth the trouble a proper nose-punch would have caused, no matter how soul-satisfying it might have been.

 

I don't know if that bar owner ever got his safe open again. If he did, I hope he was nice to the safe tech who did the job. END

 

Ken Dunckel

Owner, Safecracker

Serving San Francisco and the Bay Area

415-203-7298

kendunckel@gmail.com