New threads, needlemania, parking BS
For a long time I have needed to get some new pants for work. A bunch of my Gap khaki’s were literally falling apart. The cuffs at the bottom were fraying and a couple pair started to fray right by the zipper. They have been that way for a long time but I just kept putting off buying new pants. I just hate spending money on clothes. Well I finally had enough on Monday and went online to gap.com and bought myself 4 new pair of pants. Thank God for the internet, it allows me to clothe myself without stepping foot in a store.
Here are the pictures
of the aftermath of my Christmas tree removal
. As you can see, the needle carnage was quite extreme. I don’t know if I will try to push the limits of xmas tree longevity next year. It was quite the mess.
We have an annoying situation at work. Ever since I have worked here there have been issues with parking. When I first started here, the first row of our parking lot was reserved for the general public to use, the rest was open game. We also had the ability to use the church parking lot that was right next door to us. During the heart of the day, parking has always been a challenge to find. Well as time passed, the parking situation has become increasingly more annoying, and the lion share of the blame comes from people associated with the church that have nothing better to do than whine and complain about the use of spaces that they don’t use.
A couple years ago the church started putting home made signs on certain spots that indicated CHURCH PARKING ONLY. If a car was parked in such a spot and the church nazi’s inside witnessed the driver walking towards the government center, they would scurry out and leave a ominous warning on the windshield. It was annoying bullshit. Eventually an edict was passed down that we were only allowed to park in the one row of the church lot, adjacent to us. The county actually pays the church for the use of these spots.
Well a little over a year ago, the county broke ground on a large parking garage that consumed a huge block of parking for county employees. At that time we were told that construction should only take 6 months and after that time period we could go back to our normal parking situation. The county went as far as to repaint all the wheel stops in each parking space. The ones that county employees were allowed to park in were painted green, all others were painted white and tagged PUBLIC ONLY. Several memos were passed around saying how we should want to better serve our customers and make that parking available to them, they expected us to either park at the green spaces around the far edges of the parking area or park in a parking garage that was ridiculously far away from our office on the far end of the large complex.
When this initial edict came down there was a huge backlash from the employees. If I parked in that garage I would literally consume half of my lunch hour getting to and from my vehicle which is just total bullshit. Many people griped about even parking on the far edges of the parking lot because in many cases it doubled or triple the amount of time it took to walk into the building. Eventually the uproar settled down and people generally just parked in those green spaces or in the first row of the church lot like good little boys and girls. We complied because it was only temporary and once this massive garage was built the public would have tons of places to park. Our office employees generally followed the parking rues, however there were tons of county employees from other departments that parked wherever the f they wanted, which added to our frustration.
Well a couple months ago the new garage finally opened, not 6 months but nearly a year after they broke ground. Finally, we can be done with the bullshit. Even with the garage open, almost all of our employees continued to still park on the far reaches of the lot and in our designated row in the church, it had become habit by then. The county went around and repainted all the PUBLIC ONLY spots, plain white. Yay the bullshit is over.
Well yesterday a new edict comes down from the county manager. He wants employees to use the new parking garage. He rambles on about how we have it good compared to other county parking situations and how we should no longer park in the church lot at all. After they just had painted all the wheel stops, they ONCE AGAIN went around and painted PUBLIC ONLY on the spots. This memo infuriated both me and most of the people I talked to at work. I immediately saw through the memo as a knee jerk response to appease a few people associated with the church. There is nothing that annoys me nearly as much as broad strokes that affect the many to appease the whining few that have nothing better to worry about. It wasn’t like the people that parked in the church lot were doing drugs off their hoods, banging whores or causing any undue problems to the f’in church people. They just have a bug up their ass.
Well like I said the reaction here was very bad. I proclaimed to my co-workers how I absolutely will not be parking in this new garage. While it is somewhat closer than the other one, travel to and from the garage would easily consume a third of my lunch hour which would make my midday fitness session very unpractical. Our building is the farthest away from the garage of any on the complex. There is an “emergency meeting” about this right now. This morning there were actually “guards” in the church lot, making sure no criminals attempted to park their vehicle in these sacred spaces. I am sure the county is footing the bill for these guards. I mean it was just so damn ridiculous. I am standing firm on my resolution to not park in that garage. If they want to fire me over my non-compliance to follow the parking laws, let them try. I just can’t stomach this petty crap.