Imagine living in an apartment building and seeing a door to the outside of the building propped open. Would you leave it open or close it?

In this story, one tenant was in this situation, and he chose to leave the door open.

Now, the building’s old owners who currently live there and who are in the process of moving out, are calling him out for leaving the door open even though he’s not the one who propped it open.

Should he have closed the door? Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for not locking a door that the landlord left open?

(fyi I’m German). I currently live in a building which recently changed owners but the old owners are currently in the process of moving abroad so they are still living here.

The new owners don’t live here and only come by once in a while.

Yesterday the old owners were carrying a bunch of old stuff outside and the new owners had announced that they would also be in the building to repair something.

OP noticed a door propped open.

I went to the grocery store around 4pm and noticed that the front door (which is usually locked) was open and a little switch was flipped in the frame which is preventing it from fully closing (this is used when you have to go in and out a bunch of times so that you don’t have to repeatedly unlock it).

Since the old and new owners were busy around the building the entire day I assumed it was for one of them.

There’s also a gate between the property and the parking lot which was open as well, making it look like someone is going back and forth.

When I came back about 30 minutes later everything still looked the same.

The old owner called OP.

I was just back in my apartment when I get a phone call from the old owner saying that I should have locked the door when I went through it and that it is not ok to leave it open.

I explained that I had assumed it was either them or the new owners who had left it open since they were busy doing stuff in the building.

He agreed and said that it was the new owners that had left it unlocked but that I should have closed it because the new owners had already left. He said since I didn’t see anyone outside I should have assumed that someone had forgotten to lock it.

He really made it sound like it was my fault that the door was open and like I did something really inconsiderate by not locking it.

OP shares his perspective.

However, I had no way of knowing that the new owners had already left and also no way of knowing if the old owners had already finished carrying stuff from the basement to the parking lot since they could have been anywhere in the building.

Also the door is on the back of the building away from the street and it was in the afternoon in a relatively save area.

If it were at night it would have been clear that someone had forgotten to lock it.

Am I the jerk for assuming that the door was still open on purpose and not locking it? Why did the old owner check the camera to see who walked through the door last to blame them and not the new owners who were the ones to leave it open in the first place?

It’s ridiculous to blame the tenant for something the new owners did. He had no way to know who left it open or why. The old owner should call out the new owner.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person is on OP’s side.

Another person reassures OP that he didn’t do anything wrong.

This person points out why OP isn’t to blame.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who is told their fence doesn’t meet community guidelines, but then they find a way around those guidelines in their own handbook.

Nobody thinks it’s OP’s fault.

While OP didn’t close the door, he’s also not the one who left it open. He assumed whoever left it open did so intentionally and wasn’t done going in and out the door. If he had been right about that and had closed the door, whoever left it open (the new owners) probably would’ve been uspet.

You can’t know what you can’t know. There was no way for OP to know who left the door open and that they were no longer there.