AUNT'S BROKEN LOCK

A family cigarette break ended with a broken lock, a stuck door, and an aunt demanding someone else pay the locksmith.

The poster was visiting their aunt, who lives in the poster's late-grandparents' house, when they stepped out to the back garden for a cigarette. To get there, they had to pass through an inner door and then an outer one. The inner door, the poster said, was "about 15-20 years old," and it used an old mortice lock that was at least 10 years old.

The poster says they'd visited fairly regularly and had never seen the lock replaced. Another family member who lives in the house had also said "that lock has given trouble before" and had been fixed in the past.

Still, on this visit, everything seemed normal. The poster unlocked the inner door, went outside for a smoke, came back in, and locked it again. About 20 to 30 minutes later, they left the house, thinking the door was fine.

The problem didn't show up until the next day.

The aunt called, upset, saying "how she can't get out to the dryer because the key won't turn." The poster went to look at the lock and found the issue right away: "a metal plate has collapsed inside."

They couldn't repair it. The lock was done, and the poster told the aunt as much.

That's when the blame landed.

The aunt said the poster had broken the lock and would have to cover the locksmith. The poster says they refused. In their view, they had only done what anyone would do: unlock the door, use it, and lock it again. The lock was already old, already known to cause trouble, and had apparently been repaired before.

Now the aunt wanted the poster to pay for the callout anyway. The poster pushed back, saying: "I don't see how it's my responsibility to pay for the wear and tear of her property since all I did was unlock and lock the door as usual."

When asked whether they should pay, the poster ended on one blunt answer: "I don't know."

They asked the internet simply: "AITAH?"