Scene:
Interior. Sunday. Morning.
Grad Student leaves lab proper to get ice from the communal ice machine. She uses the door-propping-open-function of the door to keep it open because she has no pockets in her running shorts for keys. She makes it down to the ice machine and hears a door slam
Grad Student: Please, please, please let it not be my door.
GS walks back down the hall to her lab.
GS: Crap! That was my door. Now what?
GS frantically looks around, wanders the halls, and eventually finds a communal– free– house phone. She calls campus information.
Campus information: Campus Information. How can I help you?
GS: Hi! Can I have the number for Hospital Security?
CI: Sure. It’s 555-5555
GS thanks them, hangs up and dials the number.
Hospital Security: How can I help you?
GS: I have a problem. I’m a grad student down in Building. And I locked myself out of my lab.
HS (Giggles): We can’t help you. But Campus Police can. Call 444-4444. Have a nice day.
GS wishes HS the same, hangs up and dials Campus Police.
CP: Campus Police. How can we help you?
GS repeats her story. CP laughs.
CP: Have you tried HS?
GS: Well, they said to call you…
CP: Of course! Well, I’ll call them and tell them to send someone out.
GS goes to wait outside of the lab door. Nervously hoping that her experiments will be ok with the delay. Campus Police Officer comes up.
GS: Thank you so much!
CPO: Hi. Can I see your ID?
GS: It’s in the lab. If you unlock the door I can get it.
CPO: I can’t unlock it without ID.
GS: Seriously? (She starts panicking. Experiments…) But it’s in the lab.
CPO: There’s nothing I can do. I need the ID.
GS: Look, you can follow me into the lab. I’ll just grab my ID. Promise. Please, please, please let me in the lab. (That’s a phrase GS never thought would leave her mouth.) You really can’t unlock the door without my ID?
CPO (Laughs): I’m just kidding. Of course I can unlock the door for you. (Unlocks door) Have a great day.
End Scene.
I'm not quite sure why everyone thinks it's funny. I would have been furious.
This is a sick form of humor amongst all campus police nationwide (probably worldwide). My PI has even been denied access and sent home to find some alternate form of ID before being let into her office on the weekend…crazy right??
They (CP) find it funny b/c they don't do experiments and b/c they see us as the amusing, absentminded scientists 🙂
that is so not funny!!!!
That would be funny except for the experiments wasting away while they had their fun.
Not funny at all. What is with people who think tormenting others already in distress is entertaining?
Oh the boring life of the campus police. You might have been the only call all day. Sorry about that. I use to lock myself of my office from time to time yet it was an office made of temp walls in a larger lab so if I turned the garbage can upside down I could just hop over the wall. The first time I did that I decided to get a lock for my laptop and keep it locked to the desk.
This is horribly mean! I'd probably start crying…
I am glad you find it funny. And, I have begged my way into the lab before as well; it is an odd thing, isn't it? Maybe this is why we are grad students in the first place.