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If you manage an office building in Melbourne or anywhere in Brevard County, you’ve probably noticed a pattern — lockouts happen most often in the early morning hours, right when the first employees are arriving to start their day. It’s not a coincidence. There are specific reasons why the 6 AM to 9 AM window is prime time for commercial lockouts, and understanding them can help you prevent them.
The Early Morning Rush Creates Perfect Lockout Conditions
Think about what happens at an office between 6 and 8 AM. The building has been closed all night. The first person to arrive — often a manager or supervisor — is responsible for unlocking the main entrance and disabling the alarm. They’re usually in a hurry, juggling coffee, a phone, maybe a laptop bag. This is when mistakes happen.
Keys get left in yesterday’s pants. Key cards get left on the kitchen counter at home. Sometimes the lock itself has an issue that nobody noticed when they left the night before because someone else locked up.
The early bird doesn’t always get the worm. Sometimes they get locked out and have to call a locksmith at 6:30 AM while their employees start lining up in the parking lot.
Why Morning Lockouts Are More Common Than Afternoon Ones
During normal business hours, doors are typically propped open, unlocked, or there are multiple people around with keys or access cards. If someone forgets their key at lunch, they can usually get back in because the building is already open and other keyholders are present.
Early morning is different. There’s often only one person with access trying to open a building that’s been fully secured overnight. If that one person has any kind of key issue, there’s nobody else around to let them in. The entire opening of the building depends on a single point of failure — one key, one person, one lock.
This is also why many offices experience lockouts on Mondays more than any other day. After a full weekend away, people are more likely to have misplaced their keys, left them in a different bag, or simply forgotten their morning routine.
The Temperature Factor in Florida
Here in Brevard County, we deal with something that offices up north don’t — humidity and heat cycling. Commercial locks that work perfectly fine all summer can start sticking in the winter months when temperatures drop overnight and rise rapidly in the morning.
Metal contracts in cooler temperatures and expands as it warms. If a lock cylinder or strike plate has even slightly shifted over time, that temperature swing between a cool night and a warm Florida morning can be just enough to make a key difficult or impossible to turn.
We see this most often with older commercial buildings where the door frames have settled slightly over the years. The lock worked fine yesterday afternoon when the metal was warm and expanded, but at 6:30 AM when everything has contracted overnight, the deadbolt suddenly won’t turn.
Alarm System Complications
Many office lockouts in the early morning are actually alarm-related rather than lock-related. The employee gets in the door just fine, but then fumbles the alarm code. Three failed attempts and the system locks them out completely, triggering a security response.
Now you’ve got an employee standing in the lobby, the alarm company on the phone, and potentially law enforcement on the way — all because of a rushed morning and a misremembered code.
This is compounded when businesses change alarm codes periodically for security purposes. The code that worked last Friday might have been changed over the weekend by the security manager, but not everyone got the memo.
How to Prevent Early Morning Office Lockouts
Here are practical steps that eliminate most morning lockout scenarios:
Designate at least two morning openers. Never rely on a single person to have the only key. Make sure at least two employees who typically arrive early both have keys and know the alarm code. If one has an issue, the other can open up.
Consider a keyless entry system. Electronic keypads, smart locks, or card access systems eliminate the "forgot my key" problem entirely. Employees punch in a code or tap a card — nothing physical to lose or forget. Systems like PDK access control even let you manage access remotely from your phone.
Keep a spare key in a lockbox. A combination lockbox mounted near the entrance (but not obviously visible) gives you a backup option. We install commercial-grade lockboxes that are drill-resistant and weatherproof.
Schedule annual lock maintenance. A locksmith can inspect your commercial locks once a year, lubricate cylinders, adjust strike plates, and identify issues before they become lockouts. This is especially important in Florida where humidity accelerates wear on lock components.
Upgrade to a master key system. With a properly designed master key system, more employees can have access without compromising security. Each person’s key only opens the doors they need, while a master key opens everything.
When You Do Get Locked Out
If prevention fails and you find yourself locked out of your office at 6 AM, here’s what matters most — response time. Every minute your business can’t open costs money. Employees standing around in the parking lot, customers arriving to a locked door, deliveries that can’t be received.
Key-En-Lock offers 24/7 emergency commercial lockout service throughout Melbourne, Palm Bay, and Brevard County. We understand that an office lockout at 6:30 AM isn’t the same as a residential lockout — there’s more urgency and often more complexity with commercial hardware.
Our technicians carry the tools and parts needed to handle commercial-grade locks, panic bars, electric strikes, and access control systems on the spot. We don’t just get you in the door — we make sure the lock is working properly afterward so the same problem doesn’t happen tomorrow morning.
Locked out of your office? Call Key-En-Lock at (321) 224-5625 — we’re available 24/7 and respond fast because we know your business can’t wait.
