Imagine a big office (your program), with many assets (shared resources) and many employees (threads). For example, all employees share one common resource - a toilet. They have agreed to use a label on a toilet's door (mutex).
When an employee wants to use the toilet he checks a label on a door (locks a mutex). If it is "engaged" he waits (blocks on a mutex), then when it is "free", he enters the toilet and changes the label to
