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I'm A Jerk

Much to my chagrin, I think I am now on the wrong end of some parking shenanigans.  If you remember, we've been dealing with all sorts of nonsense regarding parking, and there was a very creative way to point out said mistake.  Through all of that, I was content in the feeling that whatever else had gone down, I was still doing what was right.  If nothing else, I wasn't intentionally party to any lame behavior.

Sadly, I think that may have changed.  The way the parking lots are set up at work, the vans have their own spots.  It makes sense if you think about it; those vans fit 14 people, so they're longer and wider than your average car.  And if you have a small army of those vehicles floating around your parking lot, you don't want them parking will-nilly.  Instead, you segregate them all in a set area, you give them wider parking spots than the average parking spot, and you call it a day.

Now, the system works great when everyone sticks to the plan.  But in order for the plan to work, everyone has to play their part.  That also means that we vanpool people have to request parking spaces.  For us, we parked in a spot that had gone vacant for a while, so it didn't have the little sign that said, "this is our spot, don't you dare park in it" yet.  But our vanpool coordinator put in the paper work, so we weren't too worried about it.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and suddenly there was a van in our usual spot.  What the heck, man.  There's a reason these things are reserved, so I was more than a tad annoyed.  I wasn't driving that morning, but the guy who was driving decided that it'd be okay if we parked in a regular spot (really, he didn't want to circle back because he didn't want to walk that far).  I wasn't exactly thrilled with this plan, but I went along with it.  Of course, as soon as we got out of the car, and I realized that the car next to us couldn't fully open their door, I realized this wasn't going to end well.

Anyhow, we also happen to be one of the last vans to leave, so I was sitting in the van waiting in the afternoon.  That's when I noticed that the sign for our usual van spot had changed.  It now had one of those "this is our spot, so don't you dare park in it" signs, only it had a different van's number.  I think someone didn't actually put in the paperwork for the parking spot.  So, what's more, I didn't even have the right to be upset about the new van stealing our spot; they were in the right.

I won't lie, I was a little annoyed the way things had worked out.  We screwed up, though, so I couldn't blame anyone.  We'd have to walk a little farther in the morning and in the afternoon, too.  Again, though, it was no one's fault but our own, so I resigned myself to our fate.

The guy who was driving that morning, though, had other ideas.  He decided that there was no way he wanted to walk that far.  So, he kept parking in the non-van spots.  Amazingly, he eventually found one wider/longer spot that looked like it used to be a van spot.  It wasn't marked as a van spot, and there wasn't usually someone there, so it wasn't a big deal.  Unfortunately, that didn't last for long, and we soon found other cars in this wider spot (some people drive very large SUV's).

So what was the rational, responsible response to this latest turn of events?  Keep parking in the non-van spots.  The ones that are clearly too narrow for a vehicle that large, and that make things more difficult for everyone else around our van.  In short, our van decided to be a jerk.  And because I ride on that van, I became a jerk by association.

I told them that I thought it was a bad idea to park there, in the hopes that it would be enough to make these folks reconsider.  There are only a couple of people who work over in that direction, anyway, so I figured I only had to talk two of them out of it (arguably, this makes the original offense even worse).  Nothing really happened, though, so I assumed the subtlety was lost on these folks.

However, I decided that I didn't want to be a part of this nonsense anymore, so I didn't ride over that way.  I walked over from the first spot instead.  I also repeated my objection, in slightly less kind words.  I wasn't nearly as blunt as I could have been, but I figured that was less subtle, right?

And ... nada.  They still park the van over in that lot, in spots that weren't meant for vans.  I still discourage the practice, but that doesn't stop me from being a jerk by association.  *sigh*

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