I've been meeting with my friend Corey a couple times a week to lift weights for several months. It used to be so perfect when he lived at our house while dating our roommate, we could just jaunt the few blocks away to the gym. Now that they moved out I meet him at the gym close to his house since he doesn't drive. The new gym is actually much nicer; it's the parking garage company that beckons my ire.
Per my estimate, we have problems getting out of the garage at least 50% of the time. Either the machine that takes cash won't work, it may charge the unvalidated price, the arm might not lift to let you out, or like today, the machine might just eat your card. Since the garage is only run by automatons, when you have a problem you must call the humans either by pushing a button on the machine or by calling the number on your card (which you might not have since the machine is apparently starving). Today, like most days, no one answered the distress call. The difference was that I wasn't alone and had two other cars that couldn't get out either. We hemmed and hawed over how to get out for 15 minutes or so: push the arm up? big fine for breaking arms. pull a ticket and get the entrance arm to come up? must have car weight on platform. crash through the arm? bad, bad, bad.
Finally, the guy in the smallest car was fed up enough and managed to squeeze most of his auto body under the arm, pressed forward and voila! it lifted. He then backed his car onto the entrance platform and pulled a ticket so I could exit there. I quickly sped through then did the same for the lady behind me (I shouldn't mention that other cars that had filed into line behind but as they were not part of our battle, we left them). We left victorious, flipped the machines the bird, and gloated all the way home about how we beat the robots once again.
Per my estimate, we have problems getting out of the garage at least 50% of the time. Either the machine that takes cash won't work, it may charge the unvalidated price, the arm might not lift to let you out, or like today, the machine might just eat your card. Since the garage is only run by automatons, when you have a problem you must call the humans either by pushing a button on the machine or by calling the number on your card (which you might not have since the machine is apparently starving). Today, like most days, no one answered the distress call. The difference was that I wasn't alone and had two other cars that couldn't get out either. We hemmed and hawed over how to get out for 15 minutes or so: push the arm up? big fine for breaking arms. pull a ticket and get the entrance arm to come up? must have car weight on platform. crash through the arm? bad, bad, bad.
Finally, the guy in the smallest car was fed up enough and managed to squeeze most of his auto body under the arm, pressed forward and voila! it lifted. He then backed his car onto the entrance platform and pulled a ticket so I could exit there. I quickly sped through then did the same for the lady behind me (I shouldn't mention that other cars that had filed into line behind but as they were not part of our battle, we left them). We left victorious, flipped the machines the bird, and gloated all the way home about how we beat the robots once again.
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