Mon, 26 Aug 2002
The Parking Malaise
My company leases part of a large building for it's headquarters which houses my company and an engineering firm. There's not enough parking in the main lot (A) so my company leases a lot about a mile down the road and puts some employees in the remote lot (B) based on seniority. The less time you have with the company, the more likely you are to be in the B lot.
Being in the B lot sucks for a variety of reasons. If you park in the B lot you have to ride a shuttle bus. My company's located on the edge of a bad neighborhood and so employees are strictly forbidden from walking. The bus driver varies and the driver's seat has occasionally been occupied by a recent detainee from the local mental institution who thinks he's Dale Earnhardt reincarnated. The bus only runs on a 20 minute schedule, so if you're off by a minute, your commute just grew by 30 minutes. Multiply that by two, once for morning and once for evening, and your 2 hour daily commute just turned into 3 hours. By the way, the shuttle bus only runs till 7PM. Now picture yourself sitting at your desk after you've been driven to work by a psychotic man and then you're at the end of the day glancing at your watch every five minutes as you try to finish your last project for the day. I surely can't be the only software person in the known universe that isn't particularly productive working this way. You get the picture.
Recently, the engineering company that occupies half of the building began laying off people which resulted in a lot of holes in lot A. I, being an opportunist, started parking in one of these holes on a daily basis, even though I didn't have the proper tag for the A lot, I'd just remove my B lot tag, thus avoiding detection by the parking police. Ah, the parking police - I forgot about them. They are people employed by my company to count which cars park where. There's a super secret decoder ring system whereby if you're a good boy and park in the proper lot, not on the street (which is also strictly forbidden), or in a lot for which you don't have proper authority, then you'll get promoted out of the purgatory lot faster.
On friday, everyone in my company save for me got a parking pass in the company's A lot. I think they do this to me just to annoy the hell out of me. What's really amusing to me is that I get paid to wait in the B lot and ride the shuttle bus every day. My company does not have telecommuting arrangements or even a VPN. In the past, I have telecommuted full-time.
And people wonder why I'm looking for another job? Do you think I'm crazy for feeling this way or do you think I should just be happy that I have a job?
Posted at: 08:19 | permalink
