A new fear has been unlocked for many TikTokers after a recent video from user Allie (@allymander_20) went viral.
In a clip with over 305,000 views, Allie says that while her brother was using the bathroom at a Seattle-based Wingstop location, the lock became jammed and he was unable to exit. This led to the fire department having to break him out.
According to Allie, the whole ordeal lasted 40 minutes.
@allymander_20 What an eventful night my brother was stuck for a good 40mins. He has the worse luck 😂
♬ original sound – Allie VanWetter
In the video, one can see Allie explaining to the staff that, though the door appears unlocked, the mechanism has failed in such a way that the door has remained locked.
Because of this, someone placed a call to the fire department. They eventually manage to pry the door open, freeing Allie’s brother.
“What an eventful night,” Allie writes in the caption. [My brother] has the wors[t] luck.”
At first, many users questioned how such a thing was even possible.
“Why do they need that level of security on their bathroom door?!?” asked a user.
Allie later explained in a comment that “there’s a dead bolt on the inside that wasn’t working. and the employees said they didn’t have a key.”
As for why they called the fire department, Allie says that the store did not know what to do and that they called the non-emergency number. The TikToker also noted that they did not get their meal comped.
Allie’s brother, Nicholas, later posted a video showing his perspective during the whole affair.
@redneck_life_forsure You ever just get stuck in a wingstop bathroom in Seattle thank god i had my sister with me she got the hole other side of the door #wingstop #saveme ♬ Gang Shit No Lame Shit – Key Glock
Back in the comments section of Allie’s video, some users shared their own stories of similar experiences.
“Colleague got stuck in the elevator during night shift, I had to call the fire department,” recalled a user.
“That happened to me , but the bathroom was really tiny I had no phone and the worker had headphones on & could not hear me banging on a metal door,” added another.
“This literally happened to me when I was changing in a gas station on prom night,” shared a third.
That said, many commenters agreed that there was a silver lining to the situation.
As one user put it, “at least he wasn’t stuck somewhere he couldn’t use the bathroom.”
Update 12:30pm CT, Feb. 7: In a TikTok DM exchange with Daily Dot, Allie provided more details about what exactly happened.
“We had ran in to grab our online order and I had used the bathroom first, and he held the food. I think I had only locked it part way thinking it was all the way so when I exited — no problem,” she recalled. “I held the food and waited, I heard him flush and then mess with the lock. To be honest, I thought he was messing around — he likes to play jokes, [and] I couldn’t hear him so I figured he’d just walk out and be bummed he didn’t trick me. It wasn’t until I saw my boyfriend and his best friend walk in did I realize, ‘oh no, he[‘s] stuck,’ because my phone was in the car and he called it.”
She then recounted the experience of trying to resolve the issue.
“So when I first asked the employee if they had a master key for the lock, the poor worker was cleaning up a huge spilled nacho cheese mess during a rush. And she said to jiggle it, so we tried holding it tight and turning. We tried pulling. I gave some attempts to shoulder it. My brother does construction and so he had some strength, and he gave some strong pulls that rattled the frame,” she wrote. “After that, I was like, ‘yea, this is stuck-stuck,’ and once again interrupted them cleaning up the nacho spill to ask again for the manager or call someone because he’s actually stuck.”
“The workers tried using a screwdriver, but I don’t think they could really spare the time during the rush,” she continued. “So I asked, ‘what do you think?’ And no one suggested anything besides [the] fire department. We did call non-emergency, though! A lot of people want to know if [we] called a locksmith, and honestly I have never called one in my life so the thought didn’t cross my mind.”
She then said that she has not heard from Wingstop since the incident or the video going viral.
Allie also noted that the lock was not battery operated as many commenters suspected, meaning the issue could not be resolved with a simple battery replacement.
After her brother got out, Allie said there was a bit of a celebration.
“I let him blast his Katy Perry and we went home re-heated our wings and had a drink!” she detailed.
The Daily Dot reached out to Nicholas via TikTok comment and Wingstop via email.
