Michael The Lock Setter

Michael, a guy that I went to school with who was friends with Nick (former step-brother) came to Mercedes to work in the key and lock site. For some reason, he was determined to start out lock setting without any sort of training. He was working on a 2-track ignition tumbler (a 116 462 00 79), and after he had gotten the plates in, he came and searched me out to find out why they weren't sitting flat. When he found me, I was out in the warehouse, but the warehouse looked more like a cross between Coors and Mercedes in Baltimore than it did the Mercedes warehouse in Fort Worth. I took the lock and looked at it, and a number of the plates were sticking up. I told him to come with me, and I was going to show him how to set the lock.

We got back to the desk he was working at next to the old style room in the Key and Lock Site, but it was turned around and up against the wall, facing the key cutting room. I was trying to describe how to figure out what is the top and bottom of the lock, the sequence, and all. While I was sitting in his chair, he was in another behind me. He rolled back a little farther, pulled open some desk drawer (not to a lock station, but there was another desk there, like one of the office desks) and pulled out and handed me the sheet that I had made describing the 4-track locks.

At first I thought this would be okay, but it dawned on me that he would get confused, so I really wanted to show him the 2-track version since it's a bit different. I think that he may have even gone by the 4-track sheet to begin with, and that was why his current lock was messed up.

Somehow I kept getting distracted from even being able to start describing to him how to set this lock. Either he kept wandering off or not paying attention, or someone else kept coming and asking me other questions or having me to go help somewhere else. It just seemed that no matter how much I tried to sit down and explain it to him, I never got the chance. The dream ended before I was able to really show him what to do.