This past Tuesday I attended a seminar on PCB Design for high speed circuits which took place at the Huntsville International Jetplex (snicker). I had been warned of the grossly inadequate signs directing traffic to the proper parking areas and received numerous explanations and sketches from co-workers. I needed to park in the Hotel parking area since the seminar was arranged thru the hotel and took place in one of their conference rooms. I found the hotel parking area fairly easily. There is one little lane that splits off the main loop (very quickly) with a very small sign that is turned at an angle that makes it impossible to see till your right up on it. I pushed the button at the gate and collected my ticket then parked and walked thru the parking garage, across the terminal dropoff area (there were about 8 police cars and two hum-v’s in this area complete with gaurdsmen), into the airport then to the conference room. About one hour into the seminar, this one guy stands up and informs everyone that at break time he will be collecting everyones parking ticket and will take the tickets to the hotel front desk to be validated. Like clock work, he does just that. When we returned from break and settled in for the next hour, he began to pass the parking tickets back out to everyone. When the seminar was over, people gathered into several groups to chit-chat for about thirty minutes or so, then proceeded to exit the building, thru the parking garage and into the hotel parking area. I noticed a couple of people had a little bit of trouble getting their ticket to open the gate. One guy tried 10-12 times then backed up, let his buddy try, then scooted under the gate right behind his buddy (the gate almost came down on the roof of his car). The next few people made it thru without any problem. I pull up to the gate, insert my ticket into the slot and it says “invalid ticket type” and rejected the ticket. I try about 10-12 times with the same result each and every time. By this time there are 7 or 8 cars stacked up behind me, so I had to motion to the guy behind me to back up, then he had to motion to the guy behind him and so on and so on. Five minutes later I finally have room to back up and park my car. I then proceed back to the hotel front desk and explained to the desk clerk that my ticket doesn’t work and I can’t get out of the hotel parking lot. Her first response (after looking at my ticket) is “You didn’t park in the right parking lot.” Then it dawned on me what had happened, there were no names on the tickets when they were collected and it was very unlikely that I got the same ticket back that I originally had. After convincing her that was what took place, she gave me some slip of paper and told me to give it to the parking lot attendant as proof that I was there attending a seminar and shouldn’t have to pay for parking. I walk back out to my car then realized “WHAT PARKING LOT ATTENDANT.” This was just a small parking area with an in gate and an out gate. I pull back up to the out gate, try my ticket again, this time with my fingers crossed, no luck. I then noticed there was an intercom button on the ticket stand, so I press it. A lady says, “may I help you?”. I tell her my ticket doesn’t work and I can’t get out of the parking lot. She directs me to another gate that goes into the parking garage and is clearly marked ‘DO NOT ENTER’. I pull up to that gate thinking she is going to meet me there or can see me thru a camera and will open the gate. After about five minutes I started punching the intercom button at that gate, she says “Can I help you?”. I tell her to let me thru, I’m the guy that can’t get out of the parking lot. I finally drive up to the gates where there are booths and actual people in them and I hand her my ticket and the piece of paper the desk clerk gave me and proceed to explain to her the ticket swapping thing. She says “You didn’t park in the right parking lot”. I’m getting furious by now and I have to piss real bad. Finally another guy came over and I had to explain the situation all over again to him. After another five minutes, he said they should have known better than to swap all those tickets, I agreed and they let me thru.
It really didn’t hit me till later that night after a few drinks while I was watching CNN and they were talking about the current terrorist alert status. That whole situation could have been a real nightmare…….you got desk clerks mass validating tickets, people slipping under gates and some guy whose doin the little piss dance running around punching intercom buttons and can’t get out of the friggin parking lot.
It really didn’t hit me till later that night after a few drinks while I was watching CNN and they were talking about the current terrorist alert status. That whole situation could have been a real nightmare…….you got desk clerks mass validating tickets, people slipping under gates and some guy whose doin the little piss dance running around punching intercom buttons and can’t get out of the friggin parking lot.
