The Parking Lot Experience

I keep forgetting to post about this, so since I'm kind of stuck on my coding for the moment I figured that I'd take this chance to write a quick story, its true, and it involves a co-worker and I...

So this past week we have been on a 10 hour a day schedule, well most of us, there are those who already worked 10 a day so they got bumped up to 13, but we're not going to get into that because it is not my place to talk about it.

At every lunch we got to eat on the company money, so we chose from a variety of places, it was on Thursday when this story takes place. I had recommended the local deli which is just up the road if you go straight through the college campus. So me and my co-worker went to get the order, not knowing how large the order would be to carry we decided to park and go in together. So we pulled into the parking lot while it was raining to discover there were only 4 available spots left in the lot, and of course they were in the opposite corner of where we wanted to be. We braved the walk through the parking lot and got into the deli, and got our order. THE END...

Well not really because the story doesn't begin until we get back to the car. We have all the food packed away and start the engine heading for the exit of the lot knowing full well that we have to pay a dollar to get out of the lot. There are two machines that will take the ticket and then ask for money so we go to the left most one. It sluggishly took the ticket and then gave it back to me. At this moment I was concerned so I decided, before the car behind me could take the other machine, I backed out and went to the other machine. This machine took the ticket faster but just to fuck with me threw it back at me at the speed it took it. So after another 6 or 7 attempts my co-worker gets out of the car and talks to the parking person who is just sitting in her car chatting it up on her cell phone. Remember it is raining, and so he and the parking person start talking, he is told that we need to use the call box because she can't do anything to help.

So I try to use the call box, and all we get is the voicemail. At this time there are quite a few cars starting to want to get out and they are beeping their horn, but after a while they see that no one is moving. My co-worker decides to see if he can't just manually open the gate so that we can get the food back to the office because at this point its been 10 minutes. I of course am still trying to use the call box. Soon a student from the university declares that he is stuck in his spot and has a test in 5 minutes so he helps try to open the gate, so they both go at it and get the car in the left side out. Sadly though driving an SUV I can't fit under the gate so I just have to keep pressing the button. Finally I get someone on the line but because it isn't clear that you have to press an additional button to talk to the person they hang up as they have no response to their greeting. I call again and get the man again, I tell him we are stuck in the parking lot all 12 cars that are trying to leave right now. The man informs me that I have to put my ticket into the machine in order to leave. I then informed the man that I had been doing that all along as well as trying to get him to pick up the phone. It was then that he decided that he would send someone.

Thankfully the ticket started to work a couple of minutes later and we were out of there, with the now slightly cooler or warmer food depending on the state they were in when we started this adventure, with a story to tell the company and now the internet.

The moral of the story is don't ever expect shit to go smoothly there is always something that is going to fuck up your day ever so slightly.