I used to go watch concerts at The Ritz in Rosedale, and remember walking in one night when a guy with a wad of cash in his hand outside the door said, “Ten Bucks for parking”. I barely slowed down, but remember being kinda pissed. The Ritz parking lot was in a strip mall, the guy was ripping people off.
I was reminded of this the other day, when I was parking downtown in Miami. It was an automated lot, there was a sign saying “No Parking Attendant on Duty”, but there was a guy, waving me up, telling me the prices with a fist full of parking tags in his hand. So I roll down the window and ask him about prices, when he thought I was going to pay, he stuck a parking tag on my dashboard. I grabbed it, and looked, sure enough, the tag was four days old. So, I parked the car, and started walking to the automated machine.
An older guy pulled up to the fake parking lot attendant, and the thought crossed my mind to warn him, but I just kept walking. I paid the tab, and as I walked back to put the parking tag on the dashboard, I saw the older guy standing in the parking lot, obviously becoming aware of the scam. As I walked back across the street, I saw him yelling at a cop, “I’ll have him arrested”.
It’s not the first time in my life that I regret not doing the right thing, but it strikes that it would’ve taken so little effort to have helped my fellow man, and I failed. I’m disappointed in myself.
May 8, 2009 at 3:37 am |
Give your self a break bud, what you did is all to easy, we let others figure out things on their own when the right thing would be to pick up a cell phone and have a crook arrested. (Also a matter of security for the lot owners, “why did they allow this to happen in their lot) etc, etc
THAT can cause further inconvenience for US, court time, the threats by the street scum that work this kind of thing.
I respond “correctly” about 50% of the time, maybe its me, but I’ve stopped feeling bad