Caddywack

Johnny, my work-partner-in-crime, has his mind elsewhere. On top of the fact that he hasn’t been sleeping well, his wife had surgery Monday and he’s been off work the past two days hanging out with her and helping around the house. He came back to work today worn out, so Susan and I decided today that we should all go somewhere relaxing for lunch.

The three of us all normally park in the same parking lot, so it’s a coin toss as to who’s going to drive to lunch any given day. Johnny was parked the closest, so we all piled in his big Dodge truck. While backing out of the parking spot, we felt Johnny’s rear tire bump into the curb — except he wasn’t far enough back to have hit a curb. In reality, he had just backed into someone’s Cadillac.

The next hour (technically, our lunch hour) was spent dealing with the aftermath. First we called security, who came over to the accident scene. The Cadillac was parked illegally in an area which was clearly not a parking spot. What made things worse is, it was right our blind spot, so we never saw it (but we felt it). Security spent the next 20 minutes trying to track down the other car’s owner. Eventually the other owner came out, complained that she thought the spot was in fact a parking spot (there’s no way anyone would think it’s a parking spot), complained that other people park there all the time, and then complained that she was getting ticketed when other cars were also parked illegally. The security guard was fair, and ticketed the other cars as well as the lady. Then we learned that the lady did not own the Caddy — her car was in the shop; this one was a loaner. Oy vey. We then spent another 30 minutes waiting as the lady went back to her office to try and get the insurance information for the vehicle. The licence plate had a 1997 sticker on it, so the odds of her having valid insurance seemed pretty slim.

The worst part of the whole deal was, according to Johnny’s insurance agent it looks he is at fault (apparently, no matter the circumstances, if you back into someone (even if they are illegally parked), you are at fault). I took several digital pictures of the lady’s car parked two feet away from the curb in an area which was clearly not a parking spot, but it doesn’t sound like it will matter. And that sucks.

But the good news was, after waiting another hour for lunch, we were *really* hungry by then, so we went to Golden Corral and pigged out. Yay for stress eating!

Note that there are no yellow lines around the parked Cadillac.

And that is what happens when you park there.