They want their two dollars!!

Yesterday, Gina, Chris, Liz and I went to City Place in West Palm Beach to participate in the American past-time of “dinner and a movie”.

We started off at the always enjoyable Cheesecake Factory, then walked over to the Muvico theater for the 7:30pm showing of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”.

Other than the 2-story tall loud mouth a few rows back, it was quite an enjoyable experience. How could it possibly go wrong?

It went wrong in a funny way.

When you go into the garage, you hit a button, and a miracle of modern technology gives birth to a piece of paper with a strategically located magnetic strip of parking garage related information. I can only imagine the plethora of information that fills its bits:

1. The date and time you parked

That’s all I can really come up with.

Anyway, on your way out of the garage, you give that piece of paper to the garage attendant who is usually (but not always) a miserable person hardly out of high school. They usually just don’t want to be there. Sometimes they don’t say a word at all; they’re just waiting for you to go away so they can get back to reading a book or biting their nails. (As I said, that is “usually”. There are some pleasant people that deserve honorable mention.)

We parked on the fifth floor of the garage, because I’m really particular about where I park and a qualifying spot could not be found any lower. It is a Chrysler 300, after all. As we loaded up, someone realized that we didn’t get the ticket validated. Oh well, we can pay a few dollars… or can we? (Insert ominous fore-shadowing music).

I looked in my wallet and all of my pockets, but couldn’t find the ticket. So, I checked them again in reverse order. When that didn’t work, I checked the console and the floor. No ticket. Oops. Then, everyone got in on the action in a not-so-desperate search for the ticket.

So the ticket was lost. These things happen. Surely this couldn’t be the first time in the history of City Place that someone lost a ticket. So, we began the clock-wise descent down the parking garage. I quipped that hopefully it would be a lady so I could turn on the J-Charm (tm) and woo our way out of there. Unfortunately, it turned out it was a young lady. I say  “unfortunate” because J-Charm doesn’t actually exist; its a myth. Big foot is more factual than J-Charm, and then I found myself in the unfortunate position of having the demonstrate its lack of existence.

The girl at the gate seemed like she was 16 or 17. Maybe she was actually older; I’m very bad at determining people’s age. I’m not even sure how old I am. I pulled up to the window, gave her the “howdayado”, then told her that we lost the ticket.

I was mistaken. She wasn’t a 16 year old girl. Oh no. She was a Judge Dredd incarnate; no small talk; no sympathizing; no reasoning. She is the law. She passed judgment. “That’ll be $10”.

Its important to note here that I was wrong. I lost the card. If I had $10, I would hand it over. But, the fact is that this is the year 2009 and cash isn’t as necessary as it was way back in 2008 and 2007. We, as Americans, relish in the convenience of debit cards. City Place Parking, apparently, is anti-American and accepts only cash. They are very lucky that McCarthyism has past.

Despite my wrongness, the girl was without reason. I was prepared to present 4 movie stubs and a $100 receipt from Cheesecake factory, but she wasn’t interested. There were 4 adults in the car, and none of us had cash. I was sure we could scrape up a few dollars in change from the console, but she didn’t want to even talk. She just kept repeating “I AM THE LAW! I AM THE LAW”. Rob Shneider backed her up.

Since speaking civilly wasn’t an option, the only reasonable thing left to do was to ask for the supervisor. (Incase your wondering, aborting the mission and finding an ATM isn’t “reasonable” to me.). When I asked for the supervisor, her request/response programming took over, and she said she’d call him.

A few seconds later, the supervisor pulled up on his huffy bike and stepped into the booth to see what was going on. If the girl was 17, then he was 18. He was in awkward spot, though, because he had to back his employee. As I explained the situation to him, he relied on his many months of experience to relate to me as a person and tell me that he understood; if it was up to him, we’d work something out, but of course there are the books to consider. His job was at stake; he could get audited, and being short a few dollars would not be a good career move for him. But, we all know that’s bull. There are procedures to handle this type of thing.

I challenged that there must be a button to press that opens the gate. After all, security guards get in and out. He responded that the guards have a badge that opens automatically. Oh. That didn’t work. Strike 1.

It would appear that we were amidst a West Palm Beach stand off. The supervisor suggested that I backup and go back to the ATM. Again, I lost the ticket, so that would be the right thing to do… but surely there has to be something less extreme than that. I ignored his suggestion like it never happened.

Suddenly, the supervisor suggested that he could let me out for $6. I told him I don’t think we have $6, but we’d try. So, 4 full grown adults with full time jobs started digging through all of their personal belongings and every nook and cranny of a 35k car, pulling together a growing pile of change. At that point, it was ridiculous, but the only way to get out of this was to actually find $6, or exceed his patience. (I now realize that he could’ve called security or something, but that didn’t occur to me until later). At one point, I asked him he accepted food stamps. He said yes. Bummer. That back fired. I didn’t have any food stamps. In fact, I don’t even know if they exist anymore; isn’t it all electronic now… like cash? Strike 2.

At last count, we had $4.80. Chris thought it was $5.80, but I don’t remember it being that close. It was a silly pile of mostly small change. Finally, the guy asked how much we had, and I told him. He conceded to “Just give me $2. We’ll work something out”. $2 is, probably exactly what we owed. The first hour is free, then its a dollar each hour after that. Perfect. We gave him the $2, and the gate opened. He started lecturing me about the value of the ticket, and tried to convince me that he was probably going to get fired for letting me out. “Next time, treat the ticket like gold”. I didn’t appreciate that at all. I’ve been there a hundred times and never lost a ticket. I told him that, but he was too busy counting nickels to care. He got his little lecture in, so probably felt pretty good about himself.

In the previous paragraphs, I poke fun at the people in various ways, but I don’t mean it maliciously. The girl was not at all friendly, but she was, I suppose, professional. She was as personable as her Skynet programming would allow. The supervisor did the best he could, and was polite and did participate in the banter. But, neither of them had any chance of convincing me that there was no reasonable way out of this situation. Its a garage, not a court of law or the pentagon. Look at the evidence and gauge the situation, and then log that a ticket was lost. I could’ve mailed a check if it was that important, though I don’t know if City Place has the means of processing such an advanced technology.

Note to City Place: Look into things like “debit cards” and “credit cards”. The year is 2009; they’re common place. If you want to charge us a little extra for inconveniencing you with the wonders of modern technology rather than cash, then that would be preferable to the foolishness that happened last night. Again, I understand that I shouldn’t have lost the ticket, but you could be more accommodating. Its an imperfect world; people lose tickets. I would’ve been happy to pay the $10 on a debit card rather than $2 in nickels. (But, I would not have been happy to have to backup and go to an ATM because the parking garage is stuck in 1975). You’re located in West Palm Beach; its a modern shopping and entertainment part of town. Patrons have been spotted with cell phones, computers, sneakers that light up when you put your foot down, and other space-aged wonders. A lot of them got to City Place by using a thing called “GPS”. These may seem like scary times to your cash-carrying visionaries, but I assure you, it is all quite normal. Credit cards, too, are normal. Providing it as an option isn’t going to scare anyone or confuse them to such an extent that they will no longer go to City Place. In fact, to some, it might even be considered a good service. To others, such as myself, its an expected service.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my horse and buggy to wall street so that I can trade in my bag of cash to purchase some stock certificates. This week I’m going to invest in lead paint futures.