Finals just ended yesterday, so most of the students in town have gone home for a couple of weeks. My roommate, Jim, and I are the only ones left in our house of seven. I’ve been bumming around my room since I woke up a couple of hours ago, and just now Jim came up and told me that some guy walked into our house earlier without knocking. Upon seeing that the place was actually still inhabited, he said, “Oh…uh, are there any rooms for rent?” Jim, buying the burglar’s pretense of house-hunting, shot back a confused “No.” The bastard left, and Jim, 30 minutes after the events just described, came upstairs and mentioned to me what happened. I explained to him that it’s a common practice around here for thieves to try to walk into a house and, if someone is home, ask for some random name and then leave when told they have the wrong place.
I’m just mad that I wasn’t downstairs when this happened because I would’ve loved to tail this guy around town and call the cops when he preyed on another household. It also would’ve been great to mess with him for a little bit. You know, show him a couple of rooms that we just happened to have for rent next semester, maybe exchange phone numbers.
The real upsetting part is that this guy is probably gonna ruin somebody’s day when they return to campus and find that their laptop/iPod/XBox/TV is missing. I hope he spends Christmas in jail.
I’m glad nothing bad happened, but that should show you, once and for all, to never leave your door unlocked. I’m pretty familiar with that college town multiple-roommates-in-a-house thing, and how laid-back people can get, but it’s something you all need to do, from here on out.
We lock our doors every night when we’re in bed, but as long as there are people hanging out in the living room, our front door is unlocked. We figure nobody is gonna rob us if we can see them.
So did you call the police with a description of the guy? If they’re working several cases of walk-in daylight burglaries, they’d probably appreciate any help they could get.
I’m glad you didn’t lose anything. This reminds me of a time, back in my student days, when I was on the other side of such an incident.
I was going to see a friend at his flat for the first time - he’d given me his address, something like “44 Rose Avenue, Top Flat”. So, I went round to 44 Rose Avenue. There were no doorbells next to the front door, so I turned the handle, and it was open. I was a little surprised to find myself in a normal living room rather than an entrance hall, but, undaunted, I went up the stairs to the top, and knocked on the door I found there. It was answered by a very nervous young lady. I said - “Hi there! Is Tim in?” She answered - “No… how did you get in here?” I explained that the door had been open. She replied - “Oh - that door?” It turns out that the flat was entirely seperate from the rest of the house, the stairway I’d used was supposed to be sealed off, and I should have gone up the “fire escape” at the side of the house instead, to the “real” door of the flat. I had apparently emerged, as far as Tim’s flatmate was concerned, from a storage cupboard.
Naturally, security arrangements were reviewed with the landlord very soon afterwards.
The unlocked door thing can be risky. Years ago in my apt, I went to take the trash to the garbage room down the hall. I must have been out for 2 minutes. When I returned, my SNES and Genesis (I said years ago) were gone, replaced with the impressions in the carpet.