Today I had an interesting morning.
Minutes after getting out of bed, I was spending a few moments with my wife before we both went to work when we got a call. It was from the Central Parking garage across the street where we park our car. (We’re monthly parkers.) A manager, with a vaguely agitated voice, said, “We need you to fix your ticket because your ticket was left open when you picked up your car yesterday.”
I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but a reasonable request. Except for one problem: we didn’t pick up our car yesterday.
As my eyes began to bulge out, I raised this point. And then the conversation rapidly descended to a staccato exchange of ‘Where’s our car?’ ‘I will have to call you back.’ ‘Where’s our car?’ ‘I will have to call you back.”
As I learned in the call and soon after, someone had taken the car without providing the ticket you get when you drop it off. And, apparently (though the stories became more and more dubious) when they’d done an inventory this morning they realized our car was gone. Thus, the story about the ticket being ‘open’.
I threw on some clothes and hustled down to the garage and started asking what the hell was going on. There were three or four different contradictory stories. But they all boiled down to this: the attendant on duty, who was apparently new, had allowed someone to walk into the lot, late Monday night, and drive off with the car without getting the ticket or asking for ID or anything. Not that the car thief was sneaky about it. The attendant saw the guy, who said either that he was the owner of the car or had permission to take it. Or maybe he didn’t say that. The unidentified person had this description and then that description. Then it wasn’t clear whether there was any description at all. And thus it went, descending precipitously.
It all amounted to the same thing though: the mystery driver walked in to the small one level garage, didn’t show any ID, provide a ticket, or even pretend to be anyone he wasn’t and just drove off with the car, no questions asked.
Maybe he even gave the customary wave goodbye. Who knows?
So now I’m back with the manager. Or now I’m bumped up to the next level of manager.
“Are you sure there aren’t any relatives or friends who you gave permission to take out your car?”
“P-o-s-i-t-i-v-e…”
“Where’s our car?”
“It is quite unfortunate.”
And so it went and soon we were off to the 13th Precinct to fill out all the proper forms to officially have had your car stolen.
I have to say that, though this is perhaps the sort of thing you’re supposed to say, the part of the morning I spent with New York’s finest was the most pleasant part of the day. By the time I left the 13th, I was deep into the customer service phone tree at Central Parking trying to get some explanation for what had happened and some clarity on all the conflicting stories.
“The story we hearing doesn’t seem to add up. We’re talking to the attendent at 1 PM. We’ll contact you as soon as we know any more.”
After 1 PM the whole matter was ‘under investigation’ and they “couldn’t disclose” any details.
By two, they’d stopped responding to our calls altogether.
At this point, I wasn’t sure whether I was more pissed that our car had been stolen or that this big parking garage conglomerate was actually like a big corporate three year old pretending that the whole thing hadn’t even happened. So I went back down to the garage after leaving work early. When the whole drama started in the morning, I’d been told the mystery attendent had a 3 to 11 shift. This was the guy they were going to talk to to get a straight story. Then after they talked to him suddenly they wouldn’t return our calls.
If they didn’t like what he had to say, I figured he might not be there. And sure enough, nowhere to be found.
And where was he? “I cannot disclose this.”
Cue to Josh harping and insisting. “He’s been suspended. It’s quite unfortunate.”
