Sunday, July 13, 2008
Parking Badly

Today we ran a few errands. The goal was to go and come back before it got too hot for me to be walking around on the hot pavement. As usual things didn't quite go according to plan. We only had to make two quick stops; the first being Home Depot.

When we pulled in nearly every handicapped parking place was available. Thinking of my well being my human parked as close to the building as possible in a "Van Accessible" parking spot. These parking areas have a larger than normal drop zone nest to them so a ramp or lift can be used easily. This one also has a shaded area next to the van so I had a cooler place to stand while we waited for the ramp to retract and the door to close.

We were in the store about thirty minutes, and I should add that every employee was very nice and even though they all wanted to pet me they were very respectful when my human said no. I love being the center of attention, even if I'm not getting petted.

We dashed out to the van only to find someone had parked on the ramp area instead of the next handicapped parking space. I take that back, the back half of her truck was in the handicapped parking spot, a little of it. Now this truck did have a disabled plate but since it was clearly parked on the hashed out ramp area it was still illegally parked. This also made it 100% impossible for my human to get in to her van and my feet were getting way to warm. So after a few quick photos were taken we headed back in to the much cooler store. My human brought this situation to an employees' attention and that employee and another headed out to check out the problem.

They quickly agreed that it was a problem and called, via the loud speakers, for the owner of the truck to move it. When the owner showed up we all met her outside by her truck. She was an older lady but not incompetent by any means. She didn't really take this problem seriously so as soon as her truck was clear my human pushed the button to open the door and drop the ramp. That's when she realized that we were the ones stuck and we indeed could not get in to the van. She apologized and my human accepted it.

Now my human isn't naturally argumentative and generally tries to not cause any waves but after years of this type of behavior she's grown rather tired of being so forgiving. Plus she has my delicate paws to think about when it is hot outside. What really irks the both of us is that this lady had handicapped plates, she was disabled (thought we don't know in what way she was disabled, she sure seemed fine), she should have known better than to park on the ramp zone especially next to a van. Most vans in handicapped parking areas have ramps or lifts. This woman simply makes the whole disabled parking issue worse by setting a bad example to others. Please, everyone out there, park correctly!

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