I work in your standard bland suburban office park. My company is the biggest tenant of the office park, and thus we arrogantly walk around as if we own the place, rather than just lease it. We park wherever we damn well please, which often means that employees of my company brazenly park in front of other businesses. I myself am one of the worst offenders.
Apparently the other tenants have nothing better to do than bitch about people parking in front of their offices, and we got a company-wide email yesterday from our office manager explaining where we could and could not park. Specifically, it said "Do not park in front of the door of another business." Fair enough.
This morning I pulled in and saw two open spaces. One was in front of the door of another business, and one was next to that space. I chose the one next to the forbidden space. Out of nowhere, my office manager came running out to tell me I couldn't park there. "Why not?" I asked, feigning ignorance.
"Did you see my email yesterday? You can't park in front of other business's doors. So, move."
"Oh yeah, I did see that," I said. "That's why I chose this space, and not that space," pointing to the vacant spot next to me. "Didn't want to park in front of their door."
"It's still in front of their door," she told me.
What she doesn't know is that I spent three years training to win such ridiculous, semantical arguments. I don't like to pull out the douchebag law school arguments very often, but I really didn't want to park in the annex, so I did.
"Well if the parking spaces adjacent to the space in front of the door are still considered to be 'in front of the door', then where does it end?" I pointed to the space on the other side of my car, further away from the door. "If this space in front of the door? And if so, what about the space next to it? What is the cut off?"
"I'm not sure," she said.
"Okay then. You should get some clear definitions here as to what constitutes 'in front of the door'. And until you do, I am parking here." And with that, I walked by her and went inside. I am pretty sure she hates me now, which I can handle. Unfortunately, next time I need office supplies I am probably shit out of luck.
