Clarification on the Lauer door lock
A little detail I wrote about yesterday was the remote-controlled door lock on Lauer’s office. I wrote:
Why do I focus on that detail? Because it’s unusual: to the best of my knowledge, it’s highly uncommon to install a button that lets a person lock an office door from his or her desk (if I’m wrong, and this is standard operating procedure, please let me know).
Here’s the answer [emphasis mine]:
There was also a stunning revelation that he had a button under his desk that would lock to the door to his office.
It was a security-measure used by most high-profile employees at NBC, but Lauer allegedly used it at least once so he could have sex with the NBC staffer in 2001.
So apparently the button was standard operating procedure there. If true, it’s interesting that Variety didn’t see fit to clarify that fact in its Lauer exposé.
(“Exposé” is really a good word for this story, isn’t it?)
Now that you mention the reason, in this day and age, doesn’t sound unreasonable.
Madman in the building and all..
Obviously, more lowly employees won’t get a lock or probably even a door. Cubicle.
Frankly, this “security” explanation for these remote door lock buttons sounds like a rationalization for something that was actually intended as an ego booster and demonstration of high status (“See, while you peons out in the cubicles are being slaughtered, my precious life will be saved by my Special Security Button!”). Unless the door was reinforced and armored the lock would not slow up a determined attacker much.
In practice, this door lock gizmo does not seem to have been a “Panic Button” but rather an “Instill Panic Button”.
Ok…let’s try on our conspiracy hat…
Lauer’s a predator & that seems to have been somewhat common knowledge & tolerated for the most part. Katie Couric says “He pinched my ass a lot” on TV &…crickets…She appears to never have complained or my guess is he’d have been gone long ago. He had a special lock for his door. An accommodation perhaps?
What if there are others at 30 Rock who are equally predatorial & equally well-ensconsed in the power hierarchy & the button-under-the-desk-lock was their accommodation? That’s just how NBC facilitated the felonious…?
The “security” defense…meh…
Oh…I’m happy for the left to continue to eat their own. Conyers. Franken. Lauer. The more the merrier. Lawyer’s gotta make a living somehow.
But yeh…at some point I’m tired of throwing up in my throat from all this really shameful stuff.
sheesh. automatic door close from a button under the executive desk are very common in Hollywood. It’s not going to protect against an intruder – it’s used to establish quiet and privacy. They are useful, sensible and, yes, also a status symbol. One wants privacy for many legitimate reasons.
Maybe you can get a tax write off saying it’s a security device.
Save you a whole dollar.
I am not familiar with Hollywood, nor am I familiar with the elite movers and shakers of society.
What I am familiar with is the refuse of society. The man is a predator and the door lock was his answer to a ‘woman-trap’. Once the prey is cornered they have to make a loud noise to get out, embarrassing themselves in front of everyone. Women seem overly sensitive about that sort of behavior.
Do others in authority have the same system? Probably, but isn’t Lauer’s behavior endemic? There will be others to fall in this faux moral outrage of society, but nothing will change other than people will try to be more discerning…for a time.