One of the fringe benefits where I work is free parking for about half of our employees. We have to pack in the cars and frequently have to move other peoples' cars to get out. That's cool with all the employees except one, who has made her parking privileges a 10-year personal jihad. The latest is so funny as to be blogworthy.
This employee parks in the so-called 4:30 line, where everybody leaves at 4:30 p.m. The past few days, she has been placing a note on her steering wheel informing the rest of us that she does not consent to her car being moved before 4:37 p.m. The note explains that she turns off her computer at 4:30 when the computer clock says that it's 4:30, then she needs time to clean her desktop, gather her belongings, and get across the street. There is an allowance made for anybody who needs out during the day. The note is a full page long. The first note was taken from her vehicle and turned over to the the boss so he could deal with it. There is another copy of the note on her steering wheel today.
This coworker had been waiting until 4:45 or so to leave the garage, so as to miss the traffic from other parts of the garage at 4:30. Thus her vehicle often was moved into inconvenient places. Never dented or scraped, just moved. It doesn't affect me, as I park in another part of the garage. Still, it's damn funny.
Evidently I'm not the only person around here who needs to see a therapist.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
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11 comments:
Oy. Word for the day: entitlement
That's what's wrong with too many people today (Brenda says with her grumpy old man voice); people feel entitled to the point of inconveniencing others. This lady has actually gone to great lengths to explain her social disease, as if everyone will read it and say, "Oh. Well then -- that's OK. Your need for a stress-free exit from work overrides OUR need for a stress-free exit from work. Now we GET it!"
-Brenda, who is entitled to a stress-free day on every other Thursday.
It's like Larry David told the receptionist in the doctor's office -- me-first should be the rule.
This is the latest in a long line of parking sillies. Several years ago, this same person had to be out of the garage at 4:30 on the dot to pick up her girl and get her to dance class by 5:30. On those days, she required a specific parking spot behind everybody else, and we were asked to arrange our cars so as to provide it. Most of the time we did, just to be nice. The one time I blew it off was a day on which I had to be somewhere. A third person actually moved my car -- without consulting me in advance -- so the parking queen could be out at 4:30.
As someone who does not drive, I can only listen with bemusement to the conversations about that basement.
Analytically, I had understood that giving consent to having your car moved generally was a condition of parking in the basement. I've often been tempted to spend my lunch color-coordinating the cars - all the reds in the back, all the tans on the left, etc., etc.
Oooo, that would be funny. Maybe you could color-coordinate the whole garage and set off the other units. They're really proprietary about their parts of the garage.
Yes, consent to having your car moved is implied when you park down there. I particularly enjoy moving the two BMWs. I even drove one of them around the oval a few times just for fun.
Randy, that last comment brought to my mind the similar scene in Ferris Bueller (sp?), except the parking lot attendants are replaced with tepid government attorneys and that amazing sports car is replaced with a nice, but commonplace BMW.
Living on the edge!
Oh my gosh! I happen to be watching Ferris Bueller in installments this week in the workout room right off that very garage. Great minds think alike.
Everyone leaves their cars unlocked and their keys on the front seat, if I understand correctly.
We leave the keys in the car.
Deb, sometimes it's more than egalitarian. The first time I parked in the office garage, one of our secretaries informed me that I was in the "secretaries' line" and that I was not allowed to park in that line. I was confused. I thought it was the line for people who worked the 8-4:30 schedule. The secretary would not move until I moved my car. I didn't want to be a snob, but I was thinking "lawyer, secretary; lawyer, secretary. Something isn't right about this." I was new there. It turned out that everybody -- including the other secretaries -- made fun of that gal's lack of intelligence, and my parking story elicited much loud laughter.
I used to work at the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.), here in Ottawa. When I worked there, there weren't to many cars in the employee lot, perhaps about 20. That left a lot of room.
There was one guy who used to drive some sort of "muscle car" which he had all decked out with shag fun-fur, dingle-balls, blue-lights, and had customised inside so as to have no passenger seat, and two seats in the back which rotated. He even had a little bar-fridge.
He used to park this monstrosity at an angle so that no one would park near it. If you did park within 20 feet of it, he would leave a not about it on your windshield. He checked frequently throughout the day to see that no one was near his car, and was always out during lunch and breaks to polish it/glare at anyone who walked too near it....
Pretty well everyone in the shops would take their breaks at the same time, so everyone would be out by the loading docks at the same time. I'm sure he thought people were admiring this pile of crap. How he mistook the sniggers for admiration, I will never know.
Which brings me to a pet-peeve.... people who park their cars at an angle across three parking spaces so that "no one will dent their car". The worst offender I ever encountered was in the parking lot for a local hospital. This boob had parked his van at an angle, across three spaces in one row AND, across the three spaces facing.
After driving around the lot a number of times and finding no vacant spot, I went to the parking attendant, reported it, and the van was ticketted AND towed. Served the &*%^$ right....
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