Technology Operator FAIL

When I was looking for an apartment, I wanted it to be a gated community with all the bells and whistles I could afford. That's just what I found. The apartment complex where I live is clean, quaint, has a workout and laundry room,  and a swimming pool with a fountain in the middle. It also came with an access card to get inside the gate to the complex. How high speed. Unfortunately, I didn't listen to the instructions on how to use it, only where it was suggested I store it - in the sun visor above the steering wheel.

For the first few days I was there, the gate was left open because of routine maintenance so I didn't need to use the card to get in. However, the first night the gate was working, I sat outside the gate for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for it to open. It didn't. So, I started waving my access card around furiously, hoping the invisible magnetic beams would pick up my card's security code and let me in. The gate opened. Wow, I thought to myself, that's gonna be a bitch every time I try to go home.

Well, the next night it was the same and so on until the weekend. It was a Saturday night and I had just come back from treating myself to a movie, it was late and I was tired. Like before, I sat in front of the gate and waved the card around, waiting for it to open. It was taking longer than usual, so I got out of the car and walked up to the rolling mechanism, where I was certain the magnetic reader was, and stuck my card on it. Nothing.

This wasn't good. The office was closed and I'm stuck outside the gate with no way to get in.I dialed the emergency number to the apartment complex, left a frantic message and waited for a return call.

"Ma'am!" a woman's voice called to me from behind my car.

I turned and looked at a woman who seemed to be holding back laughter. She was leaning out of her car about 10 feet behind me. Obviously, she had witnessed my attempts at trying to get my card to open the gate.

"Ma'am, you have to put your card on this thing right here for the gate to open," she explained, pointing to an access card reader, before getting back inside her car.

Oh.

There were never any invisible, high speed, magnetic beams. Turned out, every other time I had probably been let in by someone behind me.  How many of my neighbors got a laugh out of watching me wave my arms around in my car like the Wizard of Oz trying to make the gate open by summoning science-fictitious beams that didn't exist?

Fail.