Divining the mysteries of the parking deck

Why is it so difficult for some people to figure out how to get out of the parking deck? Yesterday I had the misfortune to be behind this guy in a metallic brown Mercedes - which was his first offense. Mercedi come in many lovely colors such as Pewter, Firemist Red, Caspian Blue, Mars Red and Obsidian Black, so why paint one the color of three-day-old Bass Ale? WHY? But I digress...

His next offense was creeping and crawling with excruciating slowness down the ramp. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those maniacs who feels the need to create wind shear during my descent through the deck; I’ve competed on the track at Road Atlanta, I don’t need to prove my mettle by doing Mach V in the parking deck, but still, I don’t think FIFTEEN is an unreasonable expectation. This guy was going so slowly that if you’d taken Grandma’s walker away and shot off her big toe, she still could have outpaced him. Blindfolded.

Finally we got to the exits, where Mercedes Guy stops at an angle, precisely midway between the two exit lanes, effectively blocking both of them and preventing me from being able to maneuver around him. He proceeded to fumble about, holding card after card after card after card up to the light and examining it for some moments before rejecting it and proceeding to the next of his apparently limitless supply, searching for the parking card. At this juncture I should mention that Mercedes Guy has a Fulton County tag on his car, meaning that he is not some rube who is all skeert cause he’s druv inta tha Big Bad City for the day - he lives here. And he has a parking card, which means he’s a regular parker in this deck, paying by the month, not someone on their first foray.

The parking cards we are issued are white, two inches high by three and one-half inches long and the entire front is covered by a large, bright green arrow pointing left with the words “insert this end” written upon it. The card readers have one vertical slot - not three vertical and two horizontal ones, not a keypad too, not many assorted buttons - ONE SLOT. So it’s not a terribly complex procedure to start with and they’ve pretty much taken all the guesswork out of it. Still, once Mercedes Guy has FINALLY chosen a card, debated the merits of each exit lane before making a selection and crept up to the card reader, he fumbled and bumbled and farted around for at least two minutes. HOW? What is there to deduce? What choices are there to weigh? I have been parking here since April and in that entire six months, they have not moved either of the card readers, or changed their configuration, or mutated the location of the exit ramps. Not ONCE.

Let me state for the record that I’m not one of those a-holes who can’t stand waiting even two seconds for anything - far from it. I don’t get uptight about that sort of thing. Although, upon consideration, anyone who delays me even for a moment from the ecstasy of making it to the highway where I can, at long last, sit at a dead stop for half an hour while breathing toxic diesel fumes ought to be yanked from their car and summarily shot, no questions asked. Seriously, it wasn’t having to wait that irked me, it was wondering what on earth he could possibly be doing. If you park there every day (which he does) why don’t you have your parking card somewhere handy, like clipped to the sunvisor, in a pocket of the door or dash? How do you get confused about the exit? What is there to figure out once you make it to the card reader? To make matters worse, Spring Street is a ONE-WAY STREET at that point - he doesn’t even have a choice about which way to head home. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?!?