Let me tell you a story, one that consists of exactly 1063 words. 

![photo-1629646620956-0f4b37ee450d.jpeg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/prayzz/23ynms9ENuTwcJNMvWxaKv46ogb7eTNEA6AZSaX4PULas22SQpTPcJCYY2rzFZUcF41nE.jpeg)
<sub> [Photo by Rishabh Dharmani](https://unsplash.com/photos/persons-hand-with-white-manicure-x0gw9YspcR4) </sub>
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I had mentioned it here a lot of times of how I happen to be in charge of making sure that my hostel gate gets locked by 10pm sharp every night. I'm sure I must have told the story of how that happened but here's a quick summary just in case I didn't.

The guy who was in charge of the gate last year had moved out early this year and so we had left the gate keys with another guy who had a shop in front of the hostel and was also an occupant of the hostel. But then I realised that this fellow always left the gate open until 11pm which was mostly when he closes his shop, so I had approached him and made a deal with him before taking the keys from him, because 11pm was way too risky for the hostel to be open, especially in a school environment.

The deal I had made with him was that once it was 10pm, I would go downstairs to lock the gate, leaving him outside and once it's time for him to lock his shop and come inside, he would call me and I would go downstairs to open the gate for him. I felt that was a really good arrangement and he had felt the same too before handing the gate keys over to me.

This whole thing happened more than six months ago and I've been faithful to my words, going downstairs every night to lock the gate at 10pm and then going back down to open the gate for him and lock it again by 11pm. I was so diligent doing this work that my effort had been commended many times, even some few days ago by the hostel president who happens to be blood relatives with the guy who owns the shop outside the hostel.

He had thanked me publicly during our last hostel meeting, because everyone else who had held that position always made sure that once it was past 10pm, the only way you could get into the hostel (even if you live there), was for you to pay them. This was a well known rule at the hostel, one I had told them I had no interest in enforcing. I didn't take up the role to collect money from people or anything like that, my sole purpose of doing what I was doing was for the safety of myself and everyone else at the hostel and I was happy they all were getting the message.

So with all that in mind, I continued to do the work diligently for months until about some few days ago when I suddenly fell ill. I had slightly mentioned the illness on this [post](https://peakd.com/hive-153850/@prayzz/not-holding-a-grudge) I made two days ago, which was exactly when this whole thing took place.

I honestly don't know what happened, all I knew was that I had felt really weak and had an headache that day after getting drenched by the rain on my way back home from my exam, so after I turned on my generator that night and decided to rest my head a little bit (this was after I had done the 10pm gate lock), I dozed off. This was probably the first time in months that I was sleeping that deep because the next morning, a bang at my door had woke me up. It was my neighbour and he said he was hitting the door that hard to know if I was still alive. According to him, he and someone else had been calling out my name last night without getting any response which was strange to them because they know I hardly go to bed by that time and even if I do, I will always hear my name and answer. 

That was when I decided to check my phone. 

There were calls from my neighbours, the guy who had a shop outside and his brother. The moment I saw the last two callers, I immediately knew why they had called me and I got worried. I wasn't worried because of what I felt they would do to me for not answering because I knew nothing was going to happen, I got worried because I began asking myself questions like "Did they get inside last night? Where did they sleep? Are they okay?"

Luckily, they had somehow found a way to get inside the hostel. Someone else had a key and his brother must have gone to get it from that person. Regardless, I felt I had done wrong by falling asleep like that and had immediately texted an apology message to their brother, I told him I wasn't feeling well the previous night and had mistakenly fallen asleep.

When I didn't get a response to the text, I had rushed downstairs to his room to apologise in person but what I heard him say afterwards broke my heart. The same person who was applauding all of my hardwork just a few days ago began to say rude things to me, calling me wicked and saying that I had intentionally ignored the many calls and knocks on my door that night because there was no way anyone would sleep through all that.

I felt hurt by all he said but I still made sure to apologise regardless before heading down to his brothers shop to also apologise to him in person. Surprisingly, his brother, the one who was locked outside was way more cool than he was and he had asked me to forget about the whole thing because it was all in the past now.

That whole experience just reminded of the saying that no matter how much good you do in this world, people will still judge you with the bad things you've done, ignoring all of the good, which is why I named this post 1bad cancels 99 good.

It's crazy and scary at the same time, but I'm glad all of this is happening now, in a small scale of things were the damage caused doesn't really affect anything, because now I can learn from all this and avoid it from happening (or don't be too surprised when it happens) some other time in the future.