A Lack of Perspective

I've never been accused having lacking a sense of perspective. Frankly, I'm kinda surprised by that fact.

I'd be the first to admit that I take things personally and that if it happens to me, it's never happened to anyone else -- ever -- and that no one can appreciate what I'm going through. And that everyone should feel my pain. And that it'll never end and I'll be living with the latest trauma forever.

So, delete this email now. Do it. Hit control-D or mouse up to delete or the red x or whatever. (Originally an email. You'll just have to surf elsewhere if you don't want to read it.)

Because now I'm whining and it's too late, you didn't hit delete like I suggested.

So I'm running around this afternoon. Moving computers around. Moving them into my office, moving them out of my office, retrieving new unpacked computers from the storeroom and bringing them up so be set up for a project I'm working on.

No, let's go back earlier in the day. Or even back a few days. I've been complaining for some time to any and all who will listen that people drive too fast into the underground parking lot at work.

Anyhow, back to today. I came in and there weren't a lot of spaces. But, there was one kinda close to the door. It was a smaller spot and in order to be able to open my door, I had to put my tires on one of the white lines. (There are double white lines between each space, probably 8-12 inches apart.) There was already a car in the space next to me, but he was way over the lines next to him.

I made a mental note to come back down in a few hours and look for a new parking space. I considered putting a reminder into my little handheld organizer and decided that that was overkill.

(Foreshadowing... last month, one morning I thought to myself... "I wonder when, if ever, Lori's had the tires changed on her car. I called her and she said that she still had the original tires that came with the car. That afternoon I got a flat.)

It would not have been overkill.

I'm unpacking computers when my boss starts calling out my name from the other room. I go and find him and he tells me "Your car's been hit. Yolanda's down in the parking lot with the guy who did it." Something like that just doesn't make sense. One of the first thing that pops into my mind is "Is this some elaborate ruse to get me down to the parking garage for some kind of party or something? Because that's a dumb place to hold a party and that's a mean thing to tell me if it's not true." I grab my phone, a piece of paper and a pen and Emil says something about a camera and unlocks the cabinet, pulls out the digital camera and hands it to me. I'm leaving the office when Kaycy, the receptionist starts to call after me and I continue on shouting "I can't stop now, I have to go to the parking garage." She shouts back, "Oh, that's what I was going to tell you."

My car hadn't just been hit, it had been hit twice.

An unlicensed, uninsured, non-English speaking member of the nighttime janitorial staff had come into the space next to mine too quickly and bumped the car in the space opposite it in the row. The driver had then backed up, scraping along the side of my car. Then pulled forward and then backed up again, hitting my car again. At this point, the driver hits the accelerator to try to unstick the car.

Luckily, one of the pastors was down in the garage and witnessed the whole thing. The guy could not have damaged more of the side of my car unless he had gotten a tire iron out of the trunk and started knocking out windows.

I got down there and Yolanda was down there with four people from the janitorial service, Dave the security guard, Pastor Wilson and his wife and daughter and several other onlookers. It was a big ol' party. Dave is really cool. I've underappreciated him. He pretty much took control, asking questions of one of the janitors who would translate it to the other guy who responded by very quickly. Truth be told, there's probably a very good chance that not only was this guy uninsured and unlicensed, I'm really betting that INS would be interested in buying this guy a one-way bus ticket back to Mexico.

With nothing else to jot down, I wrote down the license plate of that car and began taking pictures with the digital camera. link I didn't even realize the extent of the damage until later, so the picutres don't even fully capture it.

I went up to the security booth with Dave who filled out an incident report and took my information. He said I could get a copy in the morning. Then I went back to my office. Levi, the Director of Operations, who oversees security and maintenance/janitorial said that the owner of the janitorial service wanted three estimates and that he would pay for it without going through insurance.

I made a call to the place where Lori's car was repaired last year and they said that there would be someone in at 10 tomorrow who could do an estimate. I called a second place -- this was at 20 to 6 -- and they said I could bring it right in. This guy took his time looking the car over and making lots of notes and when I told him about the multiple estimates, he said that state law said I only needed to get one and gave me a brochure. He typed it all up and gave me back the estimate, the $3500 amount in the subject line.

I went back to the church and told Levi and Dave that I wasn't going to get multiple estimates because it was too much of my time wasted. They said that was fine and I gave them a copy of the estimate. The copiers at church are really cool, they can email you copies of anything you scan, so the whole estimate is up there on the website too.

They said they'll have more information first thing tomorrow morning and they know that if we don't have some kind of resolution first thing in the morning that I'm calling my insurance company and the police. (If they haven't already talked to the police; they were thinking about doing that tonight.)

And then I went back into the office, turned the computer up really loud and worked until Lori showed up and she drove us to Monrovia where we had a nice meal at Wendy's and then walked around for an hour.

And that's what you get for not hitting the delete button when I suggested. See? No sense of perspective. I wasn't in the car, no one got hurt and it'll all be fixed. But I had to stop talking about it with Lori before she told me to.