I have found that aggressive cursing and swearing and lamentions and general expressions of rage and self doubt, coupled with a steady beat of spit and spiteful disgust directed toward kenmore, that soul-lacking, vacuous, dead-eyed corporation that could create such a garbage locking mechanism as this.. well, anyway, I have found that if I go express and that to the machine when my wife and kid are in another room and if all do all that and shake my fists at the machine while I work through all 7 stages of grief if I do all that..!then 63% of the time such a sequence is 100% effective. Plus I jiggle the door and latch a little. That helps.