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This reminds me of storing equipment and supplies at the platoon level in the Army. The Army owns a huge number of shipping containers, like they're pervasive o

This reminds me of storing equipment and supplies at the platoon level in the Army. The Army owns a huge number of shipping containers, like they're pervasive on any Army base, just part of the landscape. Basically every platoon keeps most of its stuff in these containers instead of proper buildings (minus weapons and ammunition, unless deployed somewhere, and then the shipping containers become arms rooms too). It also just makes it easier to deploy all the stuff, because it's already loaded up to go. Anyway, they're all "secured" with padlocks. Because of personnel turnover and poor bookkeeping, the right keys always seemed to be missing, so every platoon also had a set of bolt cutters. The padlocks were constantly being chopped off whenever people needed to look for things, conduct an inventory, etc. and then replaced with new padlocks. Taking a step back, it was crazy and didn't instill much confidence.

alexjm 2y ago
I saw one city park where they took this one step farther. They had a small wooden structure (I think the cover to a water valve, from years ago when they used to set up an ice skating rink). The open it so rarely they don't even padlock it - they just bend open an S shaped link of chain, put that where the lock would go, and bend it shut. When someone needs to access it, they cut the one link of chain with a pair of bolt cutters, and then put on a new one.
le-mark 2y ago
The keys oh god the keys. Adding to this the hatches on armored vehicles are also padlocked (sincgar radios stayed in the vehicle). Keeping track of the keys was always a massive pita. A lot of privates did a lot of push ups over misplaced keys.
dctoedt 2y ago
Back in the day, on Navy ships it was a punishable offense for anyone to have bolt cutters except for the master-at-arms people (the ship's internal police force), because everyone used padlocks on their personal lockers and also on a lot of gear lockers.

alexjm 2y ago

I saw one city park where they took this one step farther. They had a small wooden structure (I think the cover to a water valve, from years ago when they used to set up an ice skating rink). The open it so rarely they don't even padlock it - they just bend open an S shaped link of chain, put that where the lock would go, and bend it shut. When someone needs to access it, they cut the one link of chain with a pair of bolt cutters, and then put on a new one.

le-mark 2y ago

The keys oh god the keys. Adding to this the hatches on armored vehicles are also padlocked (sincgar radios stayed in the vehicle). Keeping track of the keys was always a massive pita. A lot of privates did a lot of push ups over misplaced keys.

dctoedt 2y ago

Back in the day, on Navy ships it was a punishable offense for anyone to have bolt cutters except for the master-at-arms people (the ship's internal police force), because everyone used padlocks on their personal lockers and also on a lot of gear lockers.