Courts and I ride our bike to work and park in the basement between two cars. The rules are, the bosses get the car parks, but bikes are allowed to fit in anywhere they can without causing a nuisance. We've parked in the same space forever, and until recently, never had any issues. The space we park in is a triangle in the corner, wide at the back and skinny at the front where the cars either side come the closest to each other. Someone else from work parks their bike in there too as does a scooter rider from another business in the same building.
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We back into the triangle so that at the end of the day we can ride straight out the gap between the two cars. Other-bike-rider does the same. Scooter-rider does not. Instead they ride straight in and put themselves in a position so that to avoid blocking them in we have to back right against the wall and under the lowest beams. At first we didn't click that we were blocking them in but after the first time they rammed the bike against the concrete wall to get it out of the way, we sure got the message, which came in the form of seeing what's underneath the paint work. Not the best way to send a message when we're selling the bike, a note would have done the trick.
On Monday, as per usual, we parked as far back as we could. I suppose we were a little bit (I'm talking centimetres) in the way, but the scooter could definitely back out, and if they don't like reversing they've had a long time to figure out that backing in is the way to go. Fair enough they might have been annoyed. There are two sides to every story and they might not have realised we were trying to stay out of their way. But that still wasn't really a good enough reason to snap our mirror off.
Yep, clean off. The bike wasn't dropped, it wasn't accidental. there were no other scratches and the bike hadn't been moved. We looked everywhere for the missing mirror, which is only 6 months old as it is, but we didn't find it until we heard a rattle as we drove away. There it was, jammed in the back wheel. Poor Courts was doing his darnedest to stay calm in a really unfair situation but we both rode home dreaming up means of revenge that we would never go through with.
Tuesday morning we advised the receptionist and then later the building manager. We looked up the owner of the registration and we know their name. But what can we do? Absolutely nothing. We kept the mirror just in case we decide to report it to police, but that's certainly not the ideal outcome. For one thing, we're far too lazy to deal with the drama of it all. It's extremely unlikely anyway will ever reply to the email the building manager sent to all of the businesses that use the car park and even more unlikely we'll ever be reimbursed for the mirror.
So we park in a different spot and we look up prices for new mirrors. We haven't retaliated and of course we won't. I don't feel like the bigger person, I feel angry and I feel like we've been shafted. It's not unheard of for disgruntled car park users to leave notes on bikes that get in the way. As much as I'm glad we've never received one, it's certainly a better alternative to this.
Have you ever been subjected to someones disproportionate temper? What would you have done?
