I’m a victim. So our company lives in a building with a “public parking” deck residing below it. The deck is owned by one of those big parking companies who runs a significant fraction of all parking decks in the US.

Well… It stinks.

I just returned home from 30 minutes of circling, finding a “spot” (squeezing in a space that would interfere with nobody else), which is a very common thing for parkers in this lot, and getting in a heated argument with a parking attendant who saw me do it. He cited things such as “homeland security,” “against the law,” and several other ridiculous things. Ultimately, he said I’d be towed, which I didn’t quite believe since I’ve never seen them tow anyone from any “spot,” but it’s not worth the risk. Sure, Homeland Security is in our building, but that doesn’t mean parking regulations are any different. Sure, not parking in a spot is illegal out in the real world, but not a private parking deck where I’m still paying them money and I’m not causing a headache for anyone else.

The problem… The problem is they have “reserved” spots, which are a bit pricier than a regular monthly fee. Apparently some companies are doing well enough that they can purchase these in bulk and just let them sit vacant. I passed probably 20-30 such spots. At what point is the parking company overselling these premium spots? I surely hope the building has some sort of agreement with them… Say some rich a-hole comes in and says “I want to buy all the spots” just to be a jerk and leave them empty. Is that cool? Does every other company in the building need to find parking elsewhere? I doubt it. So yeah, I think they’re oversold, and it’s not fair.

Sure, they do offer double parking and incredibly timely attendants to move cars (that’s sarcasm… I know, hard to tell), but I’m not dealing with that for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, driving my car is not a trivial task… It’s old/finicky and pretty much a race car/finicky.

Yeah, I’m fuming.