She needs to buy a lock

My friend/translator and I stood outside the building waiting to pay him. Then they brought up the lock again.

“She needs to buy a lock. One for each latch.” they told my friend.

“She doesn’t need to buy a lock. She won’t be there to unlock it.” my friend repeated.

“That’s no problem. I can break it when we get there!” the driver said. “It’s company policy. She needs to buy a lock.”

“I’ll just buy a lock,” I told my friend, “It doesn’t look like the truck doors will stay closed without one, anyway. If he is sure he can break it, I have no problem buying it.”

“Ok! Go buy 2 locks!” my friend said, even though we laughed at the irony of having to buy a lock to prevent the driver from stealing when he would break it himself the next day.

So I took off running in the direction of market street. I knew Jeremy had once mentioned a hardware store nearby, but I was not sure of its exact location. I ran into the first store I saw (because low and behold it was about to rain again). The guy in the store looked at me with amusement as I tried to ask for a lock. The word I dug up on my phone dictionary for lock was obviously incorrect. After a spirited round of charades, he figured out what I wanted, but informed me he does not sell them. I sprinted out and continued down the street.

“What is the word for hardware store?” I thought to myself. Then, out of nowhere, I remembered: 五金店. I looked up, and there I saw it. A sign that said : 五金店. Amazingly, those are all characters I can recognize. I ran in the store and located the locks, shoved money at the store keeper and ran back out.

Now it was pouring. Big huge drops of rain slapped my face as I ran victoriously back to our building, locks in hand. (Pf course it would rain at this point in the story.) Back at the building, I was drenched, the truck was locked, the driver was happy, and my stuff was on its way.