Hitting the Unlike Button

Parking at my complex has always given me grief. Before the managers implemented the paid reserved parking, finding a spot, especially on weekends when everyone but me seems to have “extra” guests, was near impossible. I opted for the paid spot because I have enough uncertainty in my life, whether or not there’s going to be a spot near my building is the last thing I want to think about when I have groceries and two flights of stairs to climb.

Even with the clearly marked spots, every now and then I still find some ballsy idiot who has decided that rules don’t apply to them and I’ve had to call the tow company contracted by the complex to have their car removed from my spot.

I don’t always tow the cars in my spot. I have returned during the day to discover my downstairs neighbor has put her car in my spot (despite the empty unreserved spots on either side of my reserved spot) and I’ve left her a note on her windshield with the expectations that when she left that afternoon, she would move her car and park elsewhere. She eventually learned her lesson the hard way when the 3rd time in a row I returned to find her car still in my spot, I had to have it towed because the notes did not do the job.

I have shared with my brother (since he lives in the same complex) complaints when I’ve had to call the tow truck to have the car removed from my parking spot late in the evening. I pay for the privilege to expect my spot to be empty when I get home.

So imagine my surprise when my brother calls me “confused” because he’s sure his car has been illegally towed. When I asked him if he was certain he was in his own reserved spot, he said he assumed he parked in his spot as he does every evening. 

Probably not the case if your car is missing come morning! 

So he calls me to get the number for the towing company, which of course I have saved into my phone because of reasons. I know my morning is going to shit when he leaves me hanging on the other line as soon as I’ve recited the number to him.

Apparently he determined that his car was towed because next thing I am calling out of work, and giving him a ride to get his car out of hock. By the time we get there, he is riled up in the wake of his incompetence. Probably because I pointed out to him that the thick fog enveloping the city today was also present last night, and it is quite possible that he did not park in the right spot because he couldn’t see thanks to the fog that he somehow didn’t notice?

Not wanting to be wrong, and too quick to believe the chumps in the apartment office who told him that if the tow company had towed his car in error he wouldn’t have to pay, he’s so worked up that after about five minutes he is screaming like a lunatic at the person behind the window of the tow yard, so I drag him away so he can buy me some breakfast because his belligerence is going to get him arrested at this rate and ain’t nobody got time for that.

He ended up getting mad at me later because I made the unfortunate choice of attempting to give him an option to find out if his car had been towed legally without having to depend on the apartment office or the pissed off tow yard.

He can call the local police non-emergency number and they will tell him if the towing co. filed a report that they were towing his car. If they didn’t then he will know they are lying and they never sent the apartment office the photo—which was part of the reason why he was screaming and yelling, since they are supposed to take a photo to prove the car was parked in the wrong spot. Giving him this information in retrospect was probably a big mistake. Perhaps at this point, his hanger (hungry-anger) has worn off and he has come to the secret realization that he was in the wrong and it was his own fault he got towed away and is now very late for work.  

Proof being that he gets in my face shouting that “he just really wants his car and he doesn’t care if it costs him $200 and they are swindling him out of the money because he’ll make all that back if he can just get to work”.

At the time, I mentally threw my hands in the air and said forget it.

I drive him to the tow yard a second time in silence because obviously there is no arguing with crazy. Whatever. He gets his car and drives off to work. It is now 1030 and as I begin to make my way back to campus, I realize that I have an hour left to my shift at my work-study, it’s not even worth me making the effort to go in.

So I call work back and say fuck it. All I want to do is go home and call this day a wash. As I drive home, I realize his punk ass didn’t even say thanks for wasting most of my morning rescuing him from some blunder of his own making.