Trapped in the Office

Today I had an embarrassing moment.

For the first time, I was the last one in the office.

After spending an hour entrenched in work, I walked out of my room and noticed all the lights were off and the large security doors were locked.

Then I realized that there was a problem. The glass office doors open outward and with the security metal doors locked from the outside, I couldn't move the glass office doors.

I was stuck in the office (movie idea: Office Alone?).

I thought about what to do. What were my options?
I tried to squeeze my hand out the glass doors to try and twist open the lock of the security door, but my hand would barely fit through the small opening that the glass door could open with the security door closed.
Maybe I could stay in the office for the night and sleep on a sofa. There was enough food in the office kitchen. Maybe I could call for help.

There was no guard in the building on duty at that hour.

All I really needed was for someone to open the outer security doors from the outside.

I called up my wife and explained the situation.
She laughed.
And laughed more.
She called the kids over to the phone.
They laughed too.

After she finished laughing, she said she would think about whether she really wanted to pick me up.

In the meantime, I did some tests for how I could get the key to the security door down to the sidewalk below.

I found a small garbage bag and for my first test I breathed into it, inflating it like a balloon and threw it out the window.
I watched as the bag blew away, floating up into the sky.

Then I got another bag. I needed to weigh the bag down, so it would be pulled down to the sidewalk below. I filled the bag with water, like a water balloon.

I tied up the bag and threw it out. Splat.
It hit the sidewalk.
This gave my wife a clear marker for where to wait when I threw the keys out the window.

My wife arrived.
She called me on her phone, and I told her to wait on the side of the building, to look for a patch of water on the sidewalk.
I threw my water balloon out with the key.
She came up to my office and rescued me.