We handled a lot of cash, so every morning, and sometimes two to three times throughout the day, an armored van would arrive and deliver change or pick up the safe contents.

Due to the health-related nature of our business, we have a lot of customers who use the disabled parking spots. There were only three for the whole building, yet the morning armored truck driver would always be sure to pull his van up sideways across all three spots.

The morning delivery took the longest, which often meant customers would arrive and not be able to use those parking spots. After asking the driver not to do this anymore, I was told to call his boss if I had a problem.

His boss said if I had a problem, I had to handle it myself.

So I did.

The parking enforcement sent two people to our location, and when he pulled his van into place as usual across all three spots, they pulled an enforcement car up on either side of him and wrote him a total of five infractions.

Shortly after we switched companies, which was probably unrelated, but I secretly think it was the small shame they felt inside after being jerks about something we all know better than to do ourselves.

It was near Christmas, and the parking lot for the outdoor mall was very busy. The main draw was a grocery store. Space was very limited.

At that time, being a grade B lunatic, I drove a 1992 Miata with a supercharger. In Canada. In winter. I felt very fortunate to have found a space almost immediately, which I turned left directly into with absolutely no difficulty (since a Miata is more manoeuvrable than a gnat, and approximately the same size).

I got out of the car when I heard shouting. I looked over to see a furious man yelling at me from the cab of the massive black truck I had been following, which was sitting just behind a three-way stop, signalling left. To this day, I couldn’t tell you a single word that he said, but I am not exaggerating when I say that nobody in my life has ever been that visibly angry at me before or since, save for a couple who were responsible for my birth.

It took me about fifteen seconds to figure out that he had been signalling left, not to indicate that he was turning at the stop, but because he was trying to reverse into the space. He seemed to have decided that I had deliberately “stolen” his space out of pure greed (even though I couldn’t possibly have known that was what he was trying to do).

As I recall, he had actually gotten out of the truck, but this was quite some time ago, so that detail has become hazy. Certainly, there is a non-zero chance that this situation would have ended in violence had I not done so. In any case, I made the tactical decision that the path of least resistance was to just get back in the car and find another space.

To this day, I wonder if they were more angry that they lost the space, or at the “girls’ car” they lost it to.

I’m about to go into the parking lot to collect the loose carts that customers leave dotted around. I see a customer walking her empty cart back to the corrals after loading her car. Another customer shouts at her.

Other Customer: “Why are you doing that and being a chump? It’s their job to put those back, not yours!”

Customer: *Smiling.* “Just because it’s someone else’s job to clean the bathroom, doesn’t mean you s*** on the floor.”

The other customer shut the h*** up, and I got a new favorite customer!

This is a story from a friend. She had moved from New York to Los Angeles, and although she had driven her car there, she had not been out of the LA Basin since. Consider her a California newbie.

Our hero was an Apple Mac influencer, before the term influencer was coined. She did talks, shows, consulting, etc. (Note, she was not a nasty entitled influencer, just trying to freelance a living.)

She gets a call offering a free ticket to MacWorld in San Jose, and an offer to couch surf while there. So, after throwing her stuff in a bag, she charges down to the parking garage, puts her bag in the car, and realizes that she has no idea whatsoever where she is going. She doesn’t even know how to get out of the LA Basin.

So she goes up to the security guard in the garage and totally innocently asks:

Friend: “Do you know the way to San Jose?”

I’m in the parking lot, loading groceries into my trunk. I hear a scream. A woman in front of the store is holding her phone up, texting. A guy on a bike rides past, snatches it right out of her hand, and keeps pedaling like crazy.

She yells after him.

Customer: “HEY! HEY! HE STOLE MY PHONE!”

I freeze, too far away to really do anything but witness the act. The biker passes an employee who’s bringing carts.

The biker passes him.

The employee kicks his foot out at the bike as it passes him, pushing the front wheel sideways. The thief goes flying over the handlebars like a rag doll, hits the pavement, and skids to a stop.

His bike cartwheels behind him and lands in a twisted heap. 

The woman gasps. I’m standing there, engrossed.

The employee walks over, picks up her phone, checks it, and then calmly hands it back to her.

Thief: “WHAT THE— WHAT THE H***, MAN?! I’M INJURED! I’M GONNA SUE YOU!”

Employee: “How injured? Enough for me to call 911?”

Thief: “YEAH!”

Employee: “Oh, perfect. I’ll ask for the ambulance at the same time as I ask for the police. Save me a phone call.”

The thief realizes exactly how badly he has screwed up.

Thief: “F*** YOU! F*** THIS!”

He scrambles to his feet, limps for a second, then sprints away, leaving behind his crooked, bent, very sad-looking bicycle.

The employee just shrugs, grabs his line of shopping carts, and keeps working like it’s the most normal thing in the world. I go up to the guy after and ask if he’s really calling the police and if he needs a witness.

Employee: “Nah. The police will just file it and do nothing.”

Me: “Okay, I suppose. Still, are you okay?”

Employee: *Shrugs.* “That was nothing. The customers inside… they’re much worse.”