September 26, 2008

Windsor Car Park

Last Friday I went to the Oil Kings game. These kids are all about 4 or 5 years younger than me, which makes me feel old and useless. It also makes me realllllllly want to play hockey again. Even though I am *ahem* a little out of shape.
This game wasn't over until after 10 on a Friday night. Like, way to cut into my Friday Night Without Borders, right?! In addition, I didn't get out of work til over an hour past my quittin' time. Long day. But I had to hurry up cuz of it being the season opener and a 7 o'clock start time n'all! I've also had a contractor causing hella lot of stress @ home lately, which had contributed to my feeling a little under the weather. But I got there. I took the train using my illegitimate bus pass, as I have done in order to travel about 5 blocks to school for these past 3 weeks. You see, I had my previous 2 bus stickers on my last OneCard, rather than the new one.
After a 5-1 defeat, we traced our footsteps back to the train station. That's when it happened.
A fat, belligerent, ignorant, disgusting, retarded, fat, miserable transit guard looked at my illegitimate bus pass and says "sorry, you can't use this". I don't respond to transit giving me a hard time after giving the ETS 12 years of service very kindly.
This "man" was adamant that 'Thou Shall Not Pass'! So I let him have it. I said many bad things. Things that children usually don't hear until at least grade 4 at recess (which is probably more like Age 4 in the year 2008). This guy was not getting my $2.50. This city was not getting my money.
Eventually I walked away saying that I will just go ahead and take the bus, since 80% of bus driver's don't even say anything when I show them my library card anyways. This wasn't a real solution since it would take about 2 and a half hours to get from the coliseum to millwoods on the 8. So rather, I walked just around the corner (in a huff) and ...
...kicked the wall.
damn.
It didn't even hurt at first. The blood pulsating through my head was out-pumping the blood pulsating through my Big Toe. After a few minutes of trying not to cry, I returned back to a second ETS money guard. I explained the situation how I was in fact a legitimate student and haven't had the chance to get down to get a new bus sticker. (I needed a new One Card after all, since I am finally graduating!) He explained to me (through deaf ears) how the city loses $3M per year in lost bus fare. Bull. It's a service. It is FOR the people. It is a system designed to lose some money for the sake of taking care of its users that are so dependent on it. It is discretionary and subjective. It is reasonable. He went on to say how in This "city" called Edmonton, bus driver's are not required to do a lot of things, which in effect summed up to being DECENT human beings. But we already know all this.
After having to let him "do his job", I suppose, he handed me a little piece of paper. A bus transfer. Decent. Subjective. Reasonable.
6 days later, I am still hobbling around, with that 2 and a half bucks still in my pocket, and a nice pink bus sticker on my shiny new OneCard.
Oh right. Windsor car park. This whole story actually has a lot more to do with the kinds of people that make up our society, our work force. Well, on Tuesday I missed classes in the morning since I was feeling even worse. I did go for x-rays on Monday morning, but am pretty sure that I was beyond repair (as I am in soooo many other ways) So Tuesday I role around to Windsor Car Park at about 10:45 ready to carry on with my day. (I wasn't going to take the bus from farther away like I usually do, given my new handicap). $10. To park! In another 15 minutes, it would be only $5. So I said to the guy that I will be back, and went and waited in my car around the corner and read a book. At about 11:03 I pulled back up to the gate at Windsor Car Park. "FULL". Yeah, full of shit! I said (nearly as angrily as I talked to the first ETS guy) that I would turn around, but instead drove in and found a spot pretty close to the door since someone just happened to be leaving. Parking Dude wasn't impressed. When I got to the gate he said he would charge me 50 dollars and get the parking security to take me away if I "wasn't walking like that". I said "how bout 5", tossed it on his counter and hobbled away. He also said something about keeping so many spots on reserve for passholders. Bull. More like, if they can't force people to park before 11am and pay $10, they would rather see the lot sit empty than let someone in for only $5.
Needless to say, I will not be parking at Windsor Car Park again any time soon.

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