This is really kind of what I was getting at. I neither have nor want kids (in small part because I don’t want to have to watch a small human with the level of vigilance required to be responsible–it’s hard enough watching cats!), so I have no dog in this fight. It just seemed to me that it was a pretty risky thing to have right out there. Good point that there are a lot of risky things at a hardware store, and of course parents should be watching their kids. But sometimes they don’t. I’m actually looking at this more from the store’s perspective than the kids’.
In fact, the safe scenario seems only ever so slightly riskier than a scenario where rough-housing kids lock one of themselves in a display refrigerator, not realizing they’re air tight. Of course refrigerators don’t have built in locks, but it would be trivial to push something in front of one at a Home Depot.
Finding an employee can be hard, but I think if a child was screaming in a safe or refrigerator somebody would notice quickly. Safes aren’t more sound proof than refrigerators, are they?
Boy, that’d be creepy. “This is a fine man sized safe, but does it effectively drown out the noise of whoever, I mean, whatever is locked inside?”
If it’s a gun safe, it probably isn’t airtight. They usually come with pre-drilled openings for power cords - lots of people install lights/dehumidifiers inside their safes.
And while the child locked in scenario probably hasn’t happened, it’s almost certain that some dick somewhere HAS locked the safe and walked off with the combo. Since a safe you can’t open is unsalable, it’s pretty likely that the store does keep copies of the demo safe combinations in the office somewhere, rather than paying a locksmith $1000 each time someone thinks they’re being clever.
Most people aren’t at Home Depot long enough that their child could end up suffocating if locked in the safe but what if no one thinks to look in it? I would think the older children would be more worrisome, as you said, being pranksters and locking their friends inside. I think putting something in the safe is a good idea.
Once we were at Home Depot and they had a display of cordless tools. One of the tools was a mini circular saw light enough for a toddler to pick up. The battery was in the saw and the display was low enough a preschooler could reach the tools. We told a store employee and the next time we were there the battery was removed from the display. It would only take a few seconds for a child to grab the tool and cut someone. It was also a fun color like a toy.
It’s dangerous advertising since the item in question has a sign on it stating, “Safe” when it is clearly unsafe.
I would be far more worried about a child closing a finger in the safe door than being locked inside.
As a former manager with home depot I wouldn’t recommend bringing children into the store to begin with. Multiple children have been killed there. Home Depot has many rules to avoid future incidents. The most common way children die in a store is by climbing shelves and falling onto the concrete floors. Children have died in home depots by knocking patio doors onto themselves, ingesting pesticides, falling cinder blocks and many other creative ways. It simply isn’t a safe place for children to be. In some cases it’s been proven not to be safe for adults either. A locking safe isn’t setting off red flags for me when two isles over you have 20 refrigerators a child could climb into and suffocate in.
Oh, yeah, I’ve been seeing those safes for years. Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, Big 5, various gun shows. I’ve seen them in all those places both in San Diego county and in Ventura county (and HD in New Mexico, as well). I remember thinking at one point that “It’s a bit odd that all of these safes have the exact same combination on them!” but I also quickly realized that the numbers they are using is either the default combination or the default for the display unit and the instruction manual naturally tells new owners how to change or update the combination to their preferred numbers.
Bottom line is that 90% of the employees on the floor and probably at least 75% of the regular customers are fully cognizant of that exceedingly simple combination and could open the door with a moment’s notice. As for the pranksters and those safes, the closest I’ve seen is teens cranking the handle to extend the deadbolts while the door was open and then walking off with the combination.
As for other liabilities, lawnmower blades really aren’t all that sharp; it’s the high speed of a whirling blade that’s whacking through grass and other light vegetation. And in consideration of the zillions of other dangerous objects they stock, HD is extremely good (I *might *even say excessive) at providing signs and announcements reminding customers that they’re in a warehouse and children should not be left unattended (particularly amongst shopping carts).
–G!
The farm and home store I work for sells similar safes and it is our company’s policy to have them locked if not being shown for all those reasons already put forward. It only takes a second to break a finger with the heavy door and worse if the door actually shuts and latches. I also see potential for the safe to get pulled over by someone unaware of how front heavy they are on the display floor. Installed safes are supposed to be bolted to the floor so this is not an issue at home.