On the Front Lines

I looked on the schedule last week and found out that I was working a lot that was being picketed. I wasn’t looking forward to this since:

1) I just wanna do my job without someone bugging me.
2) I hate loud noises.

So when I showed up Monday morning, I was greeted by loud fucking music and a picket leader asking me for free parking. It’s 8:30am on a Monday morning, which is bad enough as it is, but I went drinking the night before and barely woke up in time to go to work, so I was pretty friggin’ tired. The last thing I wanted to hear was No Doubt’s “Hella Good”, or someone trying to explain to me why they shouldn’t have to pay for parking.

I told her that she’d have to pay, just like everyone else in the lot pays, or like how the people in the building next door, who are actually working, have to pay too.

Bitch.

Anyway, the atmosphere is weird since they’re picketing and playing pop music and rap music. Someone should really fix up their playlist to reflect the mood of what’s going on, because Akon’s “Beautiful” just doesn’t cut it. What they need is some Bob Dylan or Neil Young, or anyone else with protest songs from the 70s. There’s also no actual pickets, they just wear the signs over their chest and walk around in circles all day to music. It’s not exciting at all, it looks like a bunch of retarded kids decided to play musical chairs, but didn’t bring any chairs.

There I was, sitting and watching the people move hypnotically in circles in front of me when out of the corner of my eye I noticed Global TV coming down to film what was going on. They stayed for about 20 minutes and filmed a resident spazzing on the strikers for not letting him through the picket line, and making him wait 10 minutes. To get through the picket lines, every car had to wait 10 minutes before being allowed in, but(!!!), the exception being: if you were a resident or someone who worked for the parking lot, you could get in without a problem as long as you had some proper ID. This resident decided to argue with the picketers rather than show his ID to be let through, then complained the picketers were holding him up. Everyone else that day was being let through without a problem, but Global decided to film just the one guy, which I can understand, since, it’s probably more interesting (and funny) to hear someone cuss someone else down.

For the most part the people were alright. I started a couple of conversations with them and they seemed to be pretty cool, aside from the one lady who asked for free parking, most people didn’t get on my nerves. That was until I got the phone call.

The picketers use our washroom, which most people don’t give a shit about because they don’t mess it up or anything. I don’t complain, the taggers in the area don’t complain and our techs don’t complain either, but nonetheless, I got a call from head office telling me they don’t like the people using our washrooms and that I should lock it up. Since the guy wasn’t here to tell them himself, I had to relay this dick move to the picketers and they immediately went hostile on me. Pretty much everyone’s initial reaction was that they were going to pee all over my lot. One guy said he was going to pee in my booth, which really pissed me off since he was probably the guy on the picket line least likely to pull that move (read: he looks like a pussy). One guy tried to stick up for me, telling them it wasn’t my fault, but then someone else came up and yelled at me and (like everyone else) threatened to pee on the lot.

“Where are we gonna go? How ’bout I just piss all over your walls?”
“Sure, if you want to.”
“You don’t think I’ll do it?!”
“No, I just don’t care if you do.”

Bluff called. He didn’t end up peeing on my walls. He just went to the next closest place to pee. I guess his vagina makes it hard for him to actually go through with his threats considering how peeing on the walls must be a strong departure from sitting down and peeing.

An hour later I get another phone call from head office telling me to unlock the door for the picketers, but seeing as how all the picketers already left for the day, this did nothing. He said that he didn’t know what was going on and that he didn’t realize the picketers were being nice to us by letting our cars in, so if they were being courteous to us, we should be to them. You hear that?! “He didn’t know,” and “he didn’t realize,” and yet he gets to tell me what to do.

*head explodes*