If it is physically possible for your skills and your tools to disable the lock, then unless the consequences of failure actually change the conditions-- unless they make it impossible-- then there's absolutely no reason you cannot just keep working the lock until you succeed. You will succeed, eventually, unless your failure either makes the situation impossible or you give up.
The idea that if someone can't pop open a lock within the first six seconds of trying, they're physically incapable of doing it in any amount of time... that's baffling to me. What kind of "realism" is that?