Tom Martin has worked as a UI locksmith for 21 years. Martin is one of the eight locksmiths who manage thousands of doors and locks on campus. He cuts keys, changes locks and every once in a while, rescues people who have locked themselves in rooms. In addition to his job, Martin is involved with the Staff Advisory Council as a representative of the skilled crafts and trades classification. Outside of work, he enjoys travel and remodeling.
What made you want to work for the university?
We had a young family and the benefits and job security (were important). I had worked for nine years as a locksmith outside the university and was always interested in what was going on (on campus). I’m curious by nature. I’m fascinated with a lot stuff that goes on around here. As a university locksmith, you take care of things and maintain things more rather than working for someone on the outside (where) you’re more inclined to sell (a customer) something new.
Tell me about your job and your day-to-day activities.
There are eight of us in the shop and basically our day-to day duties are to maintain all of the keys and locks for the campus as well as the door closers. We’re responsible for keeping track of all the keying systems and we cut all of the keys for the campus. We take care of card access, the new electronic access on campus. We also maintain safes. My main focus right now is card access. I manage well over 200 stand-alone card readers around campus. I take care of the databases and maintenance on those. We all basically do anything that needs to get done in the shop. It’s pretty varied.
What’s the biggest challenge in being a locksmith at the UI?
If you come from the outside, it’s learning to slow down. You don’t have somebody watching over your shoulder all the time. They’ve hired you because they’re confident in your abilities. You don’t have to make a profit for someone. … Time is money here, but we’re trying to save money, not make a profit. We get a lot of different challenges. We’re asked for different ways to lock things up.
A good example is out at one of the animal clinics – they’ve got a big lab that’s got a treadmill for horses. They were having a lot of trouble with people walking by, swinging that door open and spooking the horses when they were up on the treadmill. So we had to come up with a way that they could control that so that the door could be left unlocked at certain times and they could lock it back. We’re putting a card reader on it. They’ll be able to control the times the door is unlocked and then when it’s locked, certain people will be able to access it. You’re challenged to come up with different ideas.
What do you like most about your job?
I come to work every day enjoying my job and the people I work with and all the people I know on campus. I probably know somebody in every building. I’ve been here that long and been in that many buildings. It’s a fun place to work. You’ve got to have the right attitude every day. In our particular job, we have a little more freedom than some because we’re not stuck in one place all the time. We’re all over the campus. We can be anywhere, from a lab at Beckman to working on a barn door in the South Farms. Every day, there’s going to be something a little bit different than what you did the day before. And that’s what makes it so fun and that’s what’s made the years go by so fast.
What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you on the job?
Spurlock Museum called one time and they needed to have a case unlocked because they had an artifact in there that was donated to the museum. They had lost the keys or never had the keys to it. When I got over there, they had me put on white gloves and I picked the lock open. It was supposedly a casting of a death mask of Abraham Lincoln. That’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve done. I was seeing it at the same time they were seeing it.
What are your interests outside of work?
We like to travel. I just got back from Cozumel, Mexico. We’ve been down there nine or 10 times now. We go at least once, sometimes twice, a year. We don’t sightsee or anything like that. We relax [and] lie on the beach. I highly recommend it. You feel all the stress drain out of you when you lie down on that hot sand.
We have an old house in Mahomet that we kind of fixed up. I’ve got a woodshop that I tinker in. I basically use it to do the remodeling that we do on the house. Remodeling is kind of our hobby. It’s a really old house and we do one room at a time. We’re down to the last room. When we finish the house, we’ll probably start all over again. My wife has a great sense of style and color, and is always sketching new ideas. So, who knows?