It should come as no surprise, but I’m very much a creature of habit. Repetition doesn’t really faze me like it fazes others, and I can go numerous periods of time eating the same things, doing the same activities and seeing the same programs for probably more than the average person does. I like routine, and I like there to be some degree of normalcy and repetition in my life; it’s comforting, effortless, and once engrained, simply a part of daily living. Maybe this is to say that I’ve got a facet of my brain that’s possibly autistic or at least obsessive-compulsive, due to this desire for routines and repetition.
This is no more obvious than the fact that I’m bothered probably way more than I should be when things nudge me off my routine or my expected courses of actions. Whether it’s another person’s complete lack of spatial awareness that causes them to aimlessly walk and consume space which encroaches on my line, or a person that coincidentally happens to be at the workout station that I was planning on using next, and I’ve already accomplished all my other lifts, people that disrupt my rhythm aggravate the ever living shit out of me.
But the worst of all perpetrators to me are the people that insist on taking the parking space that I’ve been trying to park in consistently for almost three years now. It is evident now that my preferred parking space is clearly the most valuable parking space in the entire fucking lot, based on how many people insist on having it now. But seriously, my days become monumental emotional uphill battles on mornings in which I can’t get my parking spot. Nothing infuriates me worse or faster than seeing that some motherfucker has gotten to it before I did, and I feel nothing but unadulterated anger for the few minutes it takes me to find another not-as-adequate-but-passable parking space.
I don’t really understand it either. My first year and change of working here, I’d never had any opposition in getting this spot. It’s really not that great of a spot in terms of it being close to the building, but it does have some subtle benefits to it. It’s a corner spot that is clearly the last spot that was painted when the lot was constructed, so it has a slightly noticeably wider width than any of the other parking spaces. I hate parking next to other people in general, so finding the spot that’s extra wide and inaccessible from one side and then overcompensating how I park to where not even someone with a door the length of a canoe could ding my door is easily the next best thing.
It’s also on the fourth floor of the parking garage, to where the building access is on five. It faces the bottom of the ramp, so there are no stairs to climb in order to get to five. Say what you want about how hypocritical it is that I’m trying to avoid a flight of stairs, but shit, I run or bicycle at the gym every fucking work day, and I have bad knees and often times tight quads and sore hamstrings as a result; a flight of stairs isn’t going to make any difference aside from being a nuisance to someone who already works out substantially. The exit is also on the third floor, so leaving from my spot is only one series of perilous U-turns, which puts my mind at ease because nobody can fucking drive, as well as the seemingly unsubstantial wear and tear of driving circles around a parking garage every day.
But that’s really about it. Otherwise, the average person would perceive that spot as not appealing, too far from the door, and out of the way. But based on the handful of people that always insist on having my spot, I’m clearly not the only one who understands the subtle benefits. Seriously, nothing ruins my day faster than getting into the parking garage and seeing one of the 3-4 different vehicles that probably have to be racing on the highways to get to the spot before I do. I see red the instant I see one of them, and I wish nothing but horrible things to the people that take my spot. I LITRALLY. Imagine the monologue from Taken, where Liam Neeson swears to find and kill the Albanians who kidnapped his daughter, and wish I could do the same but instead of kill them, like Inception some ideas that the spot is shit into their heads to make them leave it alone for me. But not to say that if they weren’t dead, it wouldn’t solve the problem either.
Seriously, these other people have to know they’re inconveniencing someone (me) with their taking of the spot. It’s not like that on a given five-day work week, I’ll still manage to get the spot on 2-3 of the days over the last three years; so it’s pretty fucking transparently clear to me at least, that someone kind of likes having this spot. Fuck these people, they’re all a bunch of pieces of shit. I don’t even get pleasure in getting my spot, just relief that they didn’t. Whenever I get my spot, I wish I had a sign or a piece of paper that said “HAHA FUCK YOU” or something on it to stick on my windshield, but obviously that wouldn’t be very civil. It shouldn’t have to be like that. I should be completely mindless and have no thought to it, because it’s a part of my routine. Again, fuck these people.
