Volunteering - Working Parking.

Other Chit-Chat
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So I’m doing this Volunteering thing at the Dallas Zoo for the Alzheimer’s association called the Memory walk. Its another one of those run of the mill walks where they collect money and people walk (<-march would sound so much better (March for a Cure!) anyways…) and me and my group of college students get assigned to manage parking for the morning shift.

People can not park. People are horrible at parking. I may be working to become an engineer but by golly I thought people had the slightest of common sense. Also I love Tetris, so Engineer + Tetris + No patience me working Parking = H E Double Hockey Sticks**.

So people park and there are about 3 cars that park one after the other and like 4 big vehicles in a row have to reverse and park like 2-3 times (per vehicle) and the trend continued. Also there were placed where a car would park then another car would park next to it and for some reason some smart guy would skip a space and one time a guy skipped 5 spots like he owned the lot or something. I have so many parking stories from this day that next time I go to an event with parking people, I’ll take 'em some Juicy Juice, you’d be surprised at how big of a difference that makes!

Anyways the event was awesome, after parking I saw these cool monkeys and elephants but the Tigers weren’t out I was a bit hurt. It was my first time to a zoo in like 10+ years.

Then I logged on to VIMS when I got home and realized I need to register for the Dallas regional and thought I’d warn the world of CD, who are potentially Tetris loving, engineers, who sometimes have these leaps of patience loss who like to help out their community.

If you want to volunteer, don’t be so quick to jump at parking. They play a mind tease on you with the cool walkie talkies and the chance to say “hey Goosey, this lot is full, time to move to the next one, over” and have someone on the other side say “roger that Robocop, lets jump to the green lot” but at the end of the day, it will drive you crazy!

You think Dave Lavery makes people crazy, work parking!!!

{GDC, if you work parking ever at an event, you’ll have some crazy ideas for games. You think you own the loony bin when it comes to the sadistic nature of your hints and even more sadistic games, you’ll notice there is a whole new word out in parking. Just a hint before you guys make next year’s game. It’ll drive you nuts, but just think of it as an opportunity to drive people even more nuts coughthe mantra of people like Davecough.}

You were warned!!!

Pavan Davé

PS. Anyone ever work parking?

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Pavan -

Dude, seriously, next time - try decaf! :slight_smile:

-dave

p.s. while reading this, I had this wonderful mental image of you spouting this out in real time, and you didn’t pause to take a breath, and your frustration was almost palpable. Glad to be here to let you vent. But you really can’t let people get to you like this. Instead of getting frustrated, you need to start looking for the humor in the situation (and I guarantee it is there). You will enjoy life a whole lot more that way.

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Try working a go-kart track, Pavan. Then you get to see them driving AND parking (a lot of tracks like to have the customers park the cars). Trust me on this; it sometimes gets pretty annoying and frustrating.

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I work parking each year for the fire department and double shift with the National Honor Society at various 4th of July activities, carnivals, fairs, and county affairs…

People do NOT know how to park by themselves in an orderly fashion lol. When there’s cones BLOCKING something, that might just mean that you shouldn’t go through the cones haha.

I feel your pain man…

although that might just be the pain in my stomach-good god I am so full of pie and turkey right now

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I spend my summers at The Owls Head Transportation Museum.* I work there full time pushing paper, and volunteer on the weekends and weeknights restoring antique and replica aircraft. Every summer there are 10ish event weekends, and museum volunteers do just about everything… except the parking. It’s simply too frustrating, so it is contracted out.

I had the pleasure of spending a good hour with an unfortunate fellow who had been blocked in despite the efforts of the parking folks. Needless to say, it ruined his afternoon.

*Should any of you find yourselves on the coast of Maine, drop by! I guarantee you’ll like it.

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If there’s a line of cars going into an area of open spaces, I do the skipping one or a few thing, so I’m not parked right next to someone opening their doors at the same time I am. It simply makes sense.

Also, at events with parking traffic directors, more often than not I find these people themselves to be the cause of the problems, because they’ll often stand exactly where I’m trying to drive in order for me to get into the space they’re frantically motioning to.

Finally, a lot of people don’t realize that the proper way to enter a parking space, is to position your vehicle on the opposite side of the lane, before turning into the space. This means if you’re cruising down a parking isle and you want to take a space on the right, you need to get ALL the way to the left before turning into the space. Then you can get it perfect in one shot.

In any circumstance, some vehicles like larger pickups and Suburbans are a pain to park in any space.

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Pavan,
Try working parking for a marching band festival, on the football practice field, in the dark! I have about eight years of that when my kids were in high school music. If that wasn’t enough, school buses are not allowed to back up in school parking lots or with students on board. That requires some advance thinking and planning. You just have to look at the fact that in the end, everyone got parked and had a good time. Nice job!

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