Indoor Road Rage Rantings

I told a couple of my friends to be on the lookout for a really interesting posting I’m working on. For the record, this isn’t the one I was talking about — that one is still in the works.

I thought I’d share my response to a job posting on Craigslist.com. The person was looking for someone to help with a start-up website that focuses on the rude things that rude people rudely do:

Dear Rude-ologist,

I probably wouldn’t have been able to send this e-mail if I had acted on my impulses yesterday in that public parking garage in Burbank. You see, I don’t believe they have e-mail access in the city jail.

In my fantasies, I was going to put my car in park and sprint to the car that was blocking everyone in the indoor garage. The back-up of cars caused cars on Palm Street to back up to Third Street.

You know what was going on, don’t you? The lazy, “Oh my god, there’ll never be another parking spot available in the world,” jerk-faced idiot was, you guessed it, waiting for someone to get into their parked car and vacate the space.

In the mind of the rude, senseless, brainless amoeba, this was to be a quality, “premium” spot, as spots go. And in his micro-bacterial mind (I’m being generous here), there were surely no available spots in the three-story structure.

And Parkinson’s Law says that another tired shopper would be unable to back her non-compact car out of her nearby compact car space. That prevented the first exiting driver from backing out and allowing the peanut-brained donkey in front of us from getting his once-in-a-lifetime spot.

Finally, when the second shopper in her over-sized “non-compact” car wriggled her way out, I was able to pass Jerkface on the left, round the first corner and select from more than three dozen available spaces.

My inclination, however, was to yank the oblivious, selfish, self-centered moron (no offense to clinically diagnosed morons — they never do stuff like this) out of his car, turn him inside out and make him eat his stomach.

When I was fuming my way on foot out of the parking structure, Mr. I’m-the-Center-of-the-Universe was still blocking traffic with that stupid turn signal flashing a Morse code message that surely was saying, “Screw all of you! I’m more important than you are! Don’t be in such a hurry! I’m waiting for this spot so I won’t have to walk as far to the Burbank Health Club across the street where I’m going to pay to get exercise!”

Meanwhile, the traffic on Third Street was backed up to Magnolia.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Oh, by the way, your proposed Rudeness site is just what I’ve dreamed someone would create. Don’t get me started on the thousand other “let me tell you about rude jerks” examples I have bubbling out of my frustrated brain.

Then again, maybe you should get me started!

Thanks.

I feel better now!

Don Ray



Are you old enough to remember the comedy bit that the late Steve Allen used to do on his Steve Allen Show? He would pick up a newspaper and read the letters to the editors with the same voice, passion and anger that he figured the original writer was feeling. Maybe you should read the above message the same way.

By the way, I didn’t hear back from the folks who posted the job on Craigslist. Maybe I wasn’t rude enough. Or maybe he or she didn’t believe that I could rant so much over something that apparently doesn’t bother other people.

Don't get me started about my grocery store observations. Did you know that people drive shopping carts the same way they drive their cars? Aaaargh!