When I was in high school, our school actually had a patio next to the cafeteria that was the authorized “smoking area” for the students. Yes, that’s how it was back in the 80’s…for all of you young’uns who were not born yet!
Official school smoking areas have gone the way of banana clips and shoulder pads (Z. Cavariccis apparently never went away!), and school security has gotten tighter, so the kids have to come up with new ways to get a smoke break. In this case, they used the tool that’s for breaking the glass on the fire extinguisher cabinet as a hold-open for the exterior doors.
Luckily, Rich McKie of School District 38 in Richmond B.C. is on the job! Thanks for the Wordless Wednesday photos, Rich!
There are 53 Wordless Wednesdays and 52 Fixed-it Fridays in 2020. Send me some photos! 🙂
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When I was in technical school we had a smoking area, it was just a picnic bench near the woods behind the school.
I used to work at a high school, and the unofficial employee smoking area was inside the fire pump room. I know…
Our high school was set up the same way . Cafeteria doors that exit onto a covered patio that often hot used as a smoking platform.
Always have to laugh when I see a LCN 4040 without the cover. Did they break it . Lose it . Or just can’t be bothered putting it on every time they need to adjust the closer .
David, middle and high schools I went to, it was more than likely the kids removing the covers,
Both facilities each had least 2 or 3 closers that still had their covers on closers, all the others were “naked”
Heck it was just that “naked door closers” at the middle school that got me into closers!
I believe it was both the kids or the maintenance crew, kids just being kids, and when maintenance did it they would also rebuild them and to observe for leaks, made it easier to check on leakers by keeping all “naked”
Just so you know; During a recent fire extinguisher service the glass breaker anchor point was moved to the other side of the cabinet so that it no longer reaches the door. Problem solved.
As for the missing closer covers, like most things attached to heavily used doors they tend to loosen over the years.
Custodians sometimes pick them up and stash them in their storage rooms (Seldom asking the maintenance people to reinstall them!) or more often they are thrown away or stomped to pieces by the students.
Hi Rich –
I wonder what the kids will use now that they can’t use the glass breaker. This could be an ongoing series. 🙂
– Lori
Actually this isn’t my first experience with tampering at this door.
A couple of years ago I noticed the door was ajar and expected it to be the usual
“Stone on the sill”. Imagine my surprise when I found an unopened tampon package
placed against the mullion to keep the door open. 😮
I’m sure that as long as the kids use this door to get off the property to smoke we will have issues.
Would it help to add a door position switch and monitor it in the office? Or is that too much trouble/expense?
– Lori
Lori, I just saw your comment.
Monitoring the door from the office would be futile.
The staff would ignore it, just as they ignore all of the doors wedged open, and held open with chairs, bags of earthquake supplies and various other things. Unfortunately it would take something very bad to make most school staff pay attention.
Several years ago one of our schools had a parental kidnap threat. We were dispatched to do a security check and found many doors propped open. We went around the building removing the props and by the time we got back to the start they were all propped open again. Even when there is a credible threat the attitude is “It won’t happen here”.
We can give them the tools to be safe but we can’t make them use them.