 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Welcome, welcome to Unhinge. Today we do have a very special guest, Mr. Chris Wilson. Last but not least, are you ready? I didn't even remember this one, so it's gonna be a surprise for me. Ah, okay, I remember this one because you probably walked through this door, Chris. Oh, I know where this is. I made a comment to somebody that looked like somebody had had a beaver that chewed on the door frame on this one. Like it was the door or the frame, I don't remember. I think it's the door. It looks like something has been chewing on it the way the paint's all mucked up because there's bare metal under there. Oh yeah, no, it's definitely exposed. So I guess this one comes with a little bit of a story. Chris and I were both at Accelerize, fell a little old as the young professional group for Sia. It was a fantastic conference, but there was something going on and they were doing construction in one of the hallways and they were directing people through this lobby access. So this is like behind the front desk where everyone that took the stairs had to go through this door. And it was almost like they were coming from behind the office. I was on a higher level, so I never took the stairs, but a lot of people took the stairs because the elevator was down. And so they only had one functioning elevator and it was like a 15 minute ordeal every single time you went to the elevator. And so it was like the last day that finally someone told me about this door. Like there's people here that know that I look for these kind of things. It was the last day when someone told me about this door. It was actually Kim Hooper that I co-presented with. She's like, wait, you haven't seen the chained up door in the hallway? You gotta come see this chained up door. I'm like, oh my goodness. This is really bad if you think about it. And it takes a second because I showed a couple different clips, but this is all the same opening. So take it in. Is it, which you're probably not gonna be able to answer this. Is this supposed to be a regular latch hole that is angled and they've somehow worn or chopped the angle off? Or is this one of those old cylindrical locksets where you turn the lever up and it becomes a deadbolt? No, okay. This was grinded off to fit better into the poorly installed strike. I like that they left the auxiliary bolt there though. We're equal opportunity grinding here. So the tile or the concrete floor was a stairwell. So the fire door tag you see, which I don't think is supposed to be painted over if I'm correct. You were in a stairwell and then you're going into an office area. So number one, it's a fire door. So the tag shouldn't be done. The door shouldn't be just open. It should be closed and positively latched. Not negatively latched. This is very negatively latched. Well, yeah. And think about if there's an emergency and they for some reason decide they quickly needed to close the door, good luck with the Boy Scout knot of chain wrapped around the handle. Like, you know what I'm saying, how quick. And bolted into the wall. Like whatever facilities guy that did this like just screwed in a giant eye hook into the wall and chain this up. Like I'm tired of getting people access to this door. Let's just leave it open for people. This was bad. I remember we, somebody we talked about it and I was like, it's very obvious. And the door was like wobbly. Like I don't know if you touched it, like grab the door and it was like wobbly on the hinges even. Like it wasn't secure. Even if it was closed, I'm not sure it was going to do its job very well because it still was having other issues. My guess is they redirected traffic this way. They had the door originally closed and had people use their car to get out. But because of the state of the door, it was probably causing preload on the strike or not. And so people couldn't get out because it wouldn't release the door properly. So maybe they tried to grind off a strike a little bit to alleviate some of that preload on the strike. But last but not least, they probably just like, well, screw it, let's just chain it open let everyone go through. Yeah. And you can tell it has been that way for a while. Cause if you looked at the blue tape, like you can see it in the pictures, but when you're there on site, like that blue tape was not freshly installed. It had some miles on it. I'm not even going to say this is okay for like an overnight solution. Like this is an emergency call, get someone in there to resolve this because they obviously just don't understand that it's a fire raided door. Again, it's that user experience, right? You're in a nice hotel. Do you expect to have to number one, go through the office, but also swipe your card on the reader. And you know, some of those cards, they get erased accidentally and now somebody's stuck in a stairwell. I'm sure that there was some of those things that happened. Like there's a doorbell here, right? So is that a, somebody was stuck before and they put in a doorbell as a help. I've stuck in the stairwell and I can't get out. Why is the doorbell there? That's gotta be something. Like, hey, I need access to this. My card's not working. Something like that had to happen. Well, so you said they're doing construction. So there normally was a different exit out of the stairwell, right? I actually didn't up the stairwell. So I was on the top floor on the 12th floor, but I came down the stairs multiple times. But if you came down and you were between the first floor and then this is the ground floor, but if you got down to the ground floor, there was nowhere else to go except through this door to get into the office to get out of that stairwell. There was not another door to the outside. That was it. Interesting layout. Well, so the key is on the, yeah, it's gotta be in the stairwell. So you'd be locked in that stairwell. Yeah, if you couldn't get access to it. But like there is, if you notice, I'm pointing on my monitor. I can't use the mouse. If you notice right here, there is an exit sign. So this is on the path of egress, but from the other direction. So there had to been an emergency exit, maybe down the stairs or something like that. So like people could escape if they needed to. I believe I didn't go down. Maybe that door was chained up as well. I should have ran down there and double checked it. Usually I'm better about that. That's like the first thing I do when I check into a hotel is, oh, actually I should have taken a picture. I couldn't leave my exit because it was set up, not delayed egress, but it had an alarm set up. It was emergency exit only. So if I pushed on it, the alarm would have sounded off. Normally I'd double check my path of egress, but I didn't want to cause a scene. I think you should have caused a scene. Especially after seeing this. Because would the alarm even be wired and working? This was the door that pushed me to call the fire marshal on this hotel. So I called them up. They said you got to go online and fill out a report. So I filled out a report and sent them these photos and they're supposed to follow up on it. So hopefully this is not the same way. Next time I go to Denver, I might have to pop into this hotel just to like double check that they got it resolved just so I can sleep better at night. Yeah, for sure. So I came down the stairs and you make a left to go through this door. And then there's another tape line that went somewhere else. And I went down there a little bit, just morbid curiosity of what was there. And I didn't see another door, but that's what I was saying earlier. Like I didn't think there was another one, but there's got to be another door down there somewhere. Cause you can't just leave somebody blocked in the stairwell to hang out. I mean there should be. Maybe I have to go back to that and double check. Cause now that I noticed the exit sign, this would be on the path of egress. So there's got to be another door somewhere unless you're going back up to the stairs to exit. But that wouldn't make any sense. Cause then you're above the ground. This is ground level. Correct. This is another one of those that drives me crazy. I wish we didn't mount readers at these ridiculous heights. Like a reader that's four and a half feet off the ground is not convenient. I get it's closer to eye level, but it feels too high for me. And that's one of those little pet peeves. And I'm like, just don't put them there. Like, let's put them in an appropriate height. What are you talking, Chris? That's easy level for me. That's convenient access. I don't have to bend over for this reader. Exactly. But if you put it lower and you carry your card in your wallet, you can just kind of hip-check the reader and get through the door. So. I get it. Definitely not ADA compliant, but I don't know why I would because this is a stairwell. Right. But little things like that make a difference on the user experience. Yeah. And I'll read to that. The reader that's like chest high to me and I'm just thinking like, I'm six feet tall and there's plenty of people that are shorter than me that I go, that's just uncomfortable to be eye level to a reader. Like I'm 42 inches to the center of the operable portion above finished floor. Like that's my go-to. Like that's a comfortable height for most people. I love it. Okay. Any last remarks, Mia, Chris, anything? Who do we know in Denver that we can send out to reinspect? Oh, actually Priscilla and Kevin with the local ass Abloy team there could drive by. Priscilla is actually not that far from this place. So. Let's send her. Yeah. Follow up. And while Priscilla is there, have her go down that hallway and like is there another address down there? What's going on? Tell us more. And then we can do an unhinged. Where are they now? Yeah, the before and after shot. Move that bus. Oh, that's perfect. Knocking score. What do you guys think? Fire door propped open is always pretty bad for me. I'm going to go nine, but I really want to go 10. Like fire door propped opens pretty knocking bad. Yeah. I would say if it was just the fire door propped open I'd probably give it an eight or nine as well. But because they modified the latch, they painted over the label. There's multiple layers to this. And anytime I call the fire marshal on somebody, it's got to be a 10 in my book. So I'm giving it a 10. Yeah, it's a 10. Especially said the doors like wobbly on the hinges and stuff. Like everything about this opening and the fact that they've permanently propped it, right? They didn't even just put like shovel wedge in there. Like no, everything here is a 10. If it was a wedge, I would have just kicked it out. I should start a collection of all the wedges that I've kicked out. You could have saved the chain. That could have been your parting momentum for Denver as you could have brought a chain home with you. It could be like Benji the chain gang, like necklace thing going on here. I took this off a door in need. Wear my bolt cutters. Exactly. Yeah. Instead of flavorflave, it's Benji balik. Benji with a chain and like a big padlock an oversized padlock instead of flavorflaves clock. I see this in your future Benji. You know, I think that's my style. 100%. Absolutely. Nerd bling, right? Okay. Well, Chris, thanks again for joining us. We appreciate your wonderful insights on these kind of scary and not so scary doors. Thank you for joining us on the show. We really appreciate your time. Thanks for the opportunity. Good to see you guys again. And we will talk to you soon. Thank you. Make sure you join us for the next episode of Unhinged. Our doors are always open partially because they're unhinged. If you want to be featured on a future episode of Unhinged or if you have a picture to submit, you can email me at Mia at doorhardwarenerds.com. Thanks for watching.