I agree that having multiple steps required to secure increases the odds that a container would be left unsecured. To an extreme degree as a thought experiment, you could think of a container that required 100 different commands to secure and imagine it would be left unlocked more often than not.
I would always argue that fewer verbs is always better though, and that it makes the game more learning-friendly. It's why I love grapple so much, since the player only has to learn one verb for their character to do a ton of different things.
If all locking things had to be locked through a verb, I think it would make a lot more sense -- but they don't, which ends up increasing the learning curve for a player's verbal command vocabulary.