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Poser Lot

I have some adventures when it comes to driving and parking. Hell, I even have some fun with the car radio. It's still a little surprising to me how many stories I end up having as a result of these two activities, but the blog posts don't lie. There are amusing stories to be had as a result of my car. Well, as it turns out, there's one more to add to the list.

In order for this to make sense, though, I'm going to have give you some background information. First of all, I work in a office complex that houses several companies. So there are lots of people walking around, but I don't work with all of them. For the most part, this isn't a big deal. Everyone is civilized to each other, and it's not like there are company-affiliated gang battles raging across the parking lot. We just nod and say hello.

Secondly, I have always intentionally parked fairly far from the office. I figure it doesn't hurt to get a little bit of extra exercise, and I don't mind walking. Yes, I know that this is entirely foreign to some people (I get some pretty interesting reactions from people when I explain this), but it works for me. Regardless, I used to park in some of the farthest spots I could find, but I unthinkingly did this in the lot closest to the office. One morning, though, it occurred to me that the other parking lots held parking spots that were even further than my usual parking spots. Well, hell. I was sort of defeating the purpose of my "park far" strategy, so I resolved to fix this.

The very next day, I started parking in the farthest lot. I didn't really think much of it, since I just figured I was parking farther away. However, the building closest to that parking lot happens to house a different company than mine. To make it even more apparent that I don't work there, their building has a security badge system that forces me to walk around their building. As soon as I start walking around the building, instead of into or through it, it is very apparent that I do not work there.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, I noticed a few quizzical looks from people in that building when I walked to my car. First and foremost, they didn't recognize me, so I already had that "stranger" look. But I was also walking around the side of the building, so people could see me coming. They knew I wasn't exiting their building. Worse yet, I was walking to one of the spots furthest from the building. On the occasions where I was walking in relatively close proximity to one of these people, they'd usually veer off to their car before I did. So now it looked like the random stranger was following them in the parking lot. This made for even more odd looks from people.

Long story short, I feel like a poser walking through that parking lot. It's not a big enough deal for me to avoid getting my exercise, but it has led to at least one sideways glance. I lead a hard life, I tell you.

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