> Plus if he picks the lock in 30 seconds you may not pay such a high fee. A story I was told once by an electrician who worked at a steel works for years. Th

> Plus if he picks the lock in 30 seconds you may not pay such a high fee. A story I was told once by an electrician who worked at a steel works for years. The story goes something like this: One day he was called out to a big engineering workshop, all their fancy new equipment is on the blink. He walks up to one of the machines, has a look, then without saying anything promptly turns around and walks outside, followed by the curious manager. The electrician circles the building and turns on the first tap he sees, and lets the water flow for a few minutes spilling on the ground. After leaving that go for a while, he turns the tap off again, and walks back in and tells the machine operators to try again. Magically, they all start working again. The electrician has been there for barely a few minutes and hasn't even touched the machine or anything else electrical. The manager asks for an explanation, since the electrician didn't even touch anything electrical. By way of response, the electrician says "You had someone fix that tap outside that was leaking, didn't you?" the manager replies in the affirmative. The electrician then explains that the leaking tap was keeping the building grounded - the slow leak was just enough to keep the sandy soils moist enough for a proper earth connection. The electrician hands over the bill, with the emergency callout fee and minimum hours, etc. The manager protests that surely just turning on a tap didn't warrant a fee that large. The electrician replies that turning the tap on was free, knowing to turn the tap on was what they were paying for. Whether that story is true or not, there's plenty of similar ones. The point is that while you might get annoyed that an expert came in and solved the problem quickly, without that expert you were going to wait a lot longer or spend a lot more trying to fix it some other way. Personally, I'd rather deal with a locksmith that gave me the option: We can drill the lock, you can pay (say) $300 for new locks and keys and it'll take 30 minutes. Or, you can pay $300, we'll pick it in a minute, you keep your existing keys. The locksmith I called a few years ago used a long piece of wire with a string attached, slid it under the door to pull down the door handle from the inside.