 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Welcome, welcome to Unhinge with the DoorDork. Today, we do have a very special nerd, Rich Strifle. Okay, next one. Sure. Speaking of death traps. Yep, so this is a computer store. This is your jam. This is- Last Christmas, I went to buy some stuff and this is the area to the left that you can't really see is where the cash registers are. And I went to buy some parts and when I went to go out the door, because I'd been in the store before, this is a fire exit and it's got chains around the handles. It's a double cylinder lock on the door, I think, I don't remember, and then this stupid gate. And the problem that I really, and again, this isn't Richmond, so this might tell you something. By the way, I don't know if you in the US use the running man symbol at the top of the door instead of the word exit. No, okay, that's an international signage thing and it's green, that's where they've changed to that here, you know, adopting the Euro thing. So that's a fire exit sign. I'm sure we will adopt it shortly. I guess if we haven't adopted the metric system, like why would we adopt this? Yeah, well, in Canada, we're a bilingual country, English and French, so not so much in BC, but if you went to a federal government building, for example, the exit signs would have to be in English and in French, so they would be twice the size. Okay, so they've gone and they were red, of course, but now these are green, because I guess somebody decided green looked more inviting. I don't know, all over the lower mainland, the fire departments have chosen to ignore these kinds of grill gates on the doors. Building code says that a fire exit is an escape 24 hours a day, seven days a week and the theory that the firemen gave me were if they're fighting a fire at this location and they're up on the roof and, you know, chopping holes in the roof so they can pour water in and the roof collapses, which apparently is not that uncommon of an occurrence when you're fighting a fire. Now the fireman is trapped inside the space, so he can't get out, right? So that's why on a fire escape, you have to have single motion egress, no special knowledge or device to open the door and clearly that is not the case here and this was at 11 o'clock in the morning on a work day. And so this is occupied, this is open, right? This is occupied space, I'm there as a customer, I'm not there working, I'm there as a customer and I kind of lit up on the manager over this one and they unlocked the whole thing but the fire department again would come through, I've been to a grocery store where they did this on one of the exits from the grocery store in a big grocery store and I phoned the fire department because I was pretty upset, I got a little paranoid about this stuff and they really gave me a bad time that they didn't want to come out and do anything about it. Really? Yeah, yeah. Welcome to Canada. Yeah, that's sad. It is, it is. So in the United States we have the AHA or the authority having jurisdiction and sometimes it ends up being the fire marshal or the fire department, but not all the time. Is there someone similar in Canada for these where there's like a regional AHA that kind of overlooks all of the life safety codes? As far as I recall, the way it works here is when you're building the building, the building inspector of the municipality that you're in and if your municipality is not incorporated or whatever, then it's a provincial guy that comes out and inspects your building and makes sure it's compliant. Once he signs off that you give to your occupancy for the space, he has nothing more to say. He's just another guy as far as you're concerned. Once you've made him happy, you can do what you want and people do things like this and it's supposed to be up to the local fire department to police this sort of stuff. And they typically don't. Are your fire departments, depending on how big the town is like volunteer or are they always paid? Oh no, paid. The lower mainland of BC of Vancouver is a population of three million people, I think. Something like that, a couple of million anyway. So they're all paid fire departments. And you know, the guys that do these inspections are typically firemen who have been injured on the job or light duties for some reason, things like that. There are guys that have, you know, taken that on as their career path. That's like bid into the job or whatever they do. And they don't seem to be particularly effective in my opinion. The reason I ask is because like my town is only 5,000 people so our fire department is all volunteer. But the bigger towns will have paid fire department staff but it's not, you know, like the smaller towns, it's just the local residents have volunteered. Well, this area used to be called the Greater Vancouver Regional District and it's the third largest area in Canada. Okay, there's Toronto, Montreal, and then Vancouver as far as size goes. Yeah, no, they're paid guys. That's really sad. Sounds like local government or something might be the person to bring this up to because they're chief of fire. I don't know. I don't know what to do in that kind of situation because this is obviously not okay. And if it keeps on happening, I mean, it's only a matter of time before something happens and who's at fault. And the situation is like we get customers to ask us to do not quite to this extreme but we get customers to ask us to put, you know, double cylinder locks on their entries and things like that all the time. And corporate wise, we won't do it. If there's a fire exit above the sign, there's no cylinder on the inside. That's it done and only one lock. And because in Canada, the liability extends to the guy who did the work. Yeah. Okay, so if someone dies, if I had done all this work and put all this nonsense on the door and there was a disaster here and somebody died in this space, they can sue, they can't sue the fire department because legislatively they're immune but they sue the owner of the shop. They can sue my employer and they can sue me and we're all equally liable. So if the owner of the building declares bankruptcy so they don't get any money out of him or out of the business, they don't get any money out of him and my employer does the same thing, not gonna happen, but does the same thing. That leaves me holding the bag and they come and take my house. That's the judgment, right? That's the liability because I'm supposed to know better than this. Yeah. Right, yeah. Which I do, which is why you're looking at the picture. I guess the person who did this didn't know any better or if they did they're just like, what are the odds? Yeah, and I've seen lots of businesses where they've asked us to do this sort of stuff and we turn them down and we walk away and you come back two months later and they found someone else to do it. And I get it, retail is really hard right now especially with the increase of shoplifting and I'm guessing that's exactly why they did this is to prevent people from grabbing stuff and running out this exit right here. I saw a news blast this morning where they got a guy who walked into an art store, picked up a $3,000 statue and walked out the door. He came back the next day and they caught him, arrested him, he was released. They came back the next day, got the statue beside it that was worth $6,000 and walked out the door. This time the police recognized him and they waited for him in the front door of his apartment building and got him as he walked up to the front door with his statue in his hand and arrested him. He was released the next day and he's done this 123 times. It's all over the news right now. So I understand why shop owners want to do this. They got to protect their property because if the guy picks up a $500 monitor and walks out the door out of a computer store, it's gone. And the shopkeepers, the guy holding the coin for it. So it's a toughie. Tough times lead to desperate situations like this. Unfortunately, this doesn't make it right. I agree. Especially like, how many locks? You said there's the cylinder there. Yeah, there's a padlock and a chain and then there's the top with a Jimmy-proof lock and a rim mounted lock on the gate. So I mean, you're not getting through that if the fire's at your back, that's for sure. Even if the fireman had an axe with them, it would take him too long to get out. Absolutely. He's got to chop his way through that aluminum gate and then go through the window. Yikes. I mean, I get why they added the double cylinders because they were worried about people breaking the glass and unlocking the door, right? Yeah, I've been to some jurisdictions where they'll have a sign. I think I've seen it in Walmart, not in Canada, but in Walmart where they have sign on the door, this door can not be locked during business hours. Yeah. Things like that. And I can kind of get that because you would expect that you should train your staff what to do in case of an emergency. This is where you would escape. When the doors are locked and we're just putting groceries on the shelves, this is the way out. But you can't train your customers that way. So you have to make the exits available to them. But we don't do that in Canada. If it's a fire exit, it's a fire exit and you can't lock the door from the inside, period. End of story, have a nice day. Wow. Yeah, I guess that's why they've made that exception elsewhere. Because, yeah, in the States. I should be clear that when I say in Canada, that it's not quite right. Yeah, yeah. In BC, you can't do that. I don't work in Alberta or Ontario or any other place else. So I don't know what their codes are like, but I know that in BC, you can't do this. But they do. Man, Rick, this is scary. Yeah, it is. Is this another 10? At least. Yeah, I would give it a 10. Knocking score 10. Like, I could get it if it was just the double-sided cylinder and it was unlocked during business hours. Like, I would let that slide. But the fact that it's three other locks on top of it, that's not okay. To the left of this door, about 30, 40 feet is another vestibule entry where you come into the store. And that was not. And that, and when I went to walk up, I paid for my goods. And because I wasn't looking at the doors, I paid for the goods. I walked up to the door and I go, I can't get it out. And the guy says, oh, you have to go down there to go to the other door. I said, no. See that sign? Open that door. Wow. Yeah, so it was even the natural exit for you. Yeah, it's the flow. You have to go backwards through the checkout line to get to the exit that they wanted you to use. Not good. Not good. Yeah, I'm giving this a 10. Yeah. If they piled stuff up in front of it, I'd call it an 11, but I'll give it a 10. At least you can get there. You can't get through it, but you can get to it. Yeah, you can see the safety from the other side, but you can't get through it. Wait, come save me. Yeah. Wow. Double 10. Are we gonna have... Can we make it a hat trick? Well, this last one is pretty nasty. If you wanna be featured on a future episode of Unhinged or if you have a photo to submit like Rick did today, you can email me at Mia at DoorHardwareNerds.com.