It’s about the principle

On Monday Samba and I went to the Mall to look for a gift for one of our friends. It was an average mall visit with us finding absolutely nothing suitable for a gift but plenty of things we wouldn’t mind buying. Samba tried on roughly one-hundred pairs of shoes and I saw a couch that I might get in the near future (I know the best birthday gifts are seldom found in shoe shops and furniture stores but we were at the mall and did what came naturally).

Towards the end of our adventures at Centurion Mall, I needed the bathroom; my feet were getting sore from all the walking on my beach slops and I was just getting tired of walking around when I knew I had to get to the gym before it closed. So I moaned and groaned at Samba enough to convince her that she didn’t need another pair of shoes and we started making our way towards the parking lot.

So we got to our parking pay station and it came out to R6.00. Now I don’t like the idea of having to pay for parking at a mall. You spend enough money on whatever you buy and eat and then are still extorted by the mall owners to pay for parking infrastructure that pays off its entire capital costs with just one month of parking fees. We basically pay the money straight into the mall owner’s back pockets if you ask me.

Anyway I start digging in my wallet for the exact amount of change because I trust parking pay stations about as much as I trust the Shaik brothers.

Using a parking pay station is in many ways analogous to playing a slot machine at a casino. There are so many things that can go wrong:
a) The pay station doesn’t accept your coins. This is just great so you start rubbing your coin on that spot that everyone uses, you know that big black spot where a grey or blue layer of paint used to be when the mall just opened. Eventually the heat you generate from the rubbing starts to singe your fingers and your coin is STILL not being accepted by the pay station. Now you’ve got to walk around like a beggar asking for someone to swop coins with you. But when you do this you lose your place in the line! Now you’ve got to start at the back of the line that started forming while you were single-mindedly rubbing your coin against the pay station. Only while you were pilfering good coins from innocent passers-by the queue grew from 5 people to looking like the licensing department during mass-action.
b) It takes your money but doesn’t register it. This is heinous. So you push the button for help and it obviously doesn’t work. So now what? Do you cancel the transaction and take the loss? Do you tell everyone in the queue behind you that you’re having a problem so they should queue at the pay station next door and then try to wave a security guard over for 10 minutes; ask him to call the parking management and then spend the rest of your afternoon trying to sort out the debacle?
c) This is the most common but still really odious: you don’t get your change. Whether it’s 50 cents or R15, you still feel robbed, and it just isn’t right. It’s like losing you hard-earned money in a black hole. So you either cut your losses take your card and try and forget the whole incident; or you don’t let it slide: you write off the next hour and start trying to contact the mythical mall management, or parking management, or whoever can give you your money back.

Rats! I only had R7.00, so I broke out in a cold sweat as I prepared to slot my coins in. In they went. They registered. Yes! My card started being printed and the change binnacle started flashing. But I didn’t hear the pleasant sound of my change hitting the bottom of the binnacle. My card was done now, still no sound, just the flashing light. Okay I had just been robbed. It was time to push the help button. I pushed the button and to my amazement I heard a voice coming through the speaker. I told the parking manager dude my plight and he told me where I had to walk to go and get my money back. This was marvellous! Although I had to walk about 500m to get my change I had a real chance of actually beating the system and taking back what was rightfully mine.

So I started on my expedition and Samba said she’d drive with my car to the place while I walked because it would increase my walking distance by about a 100m to go to the car first. My journey started off well while I was still full of the excitement in knowing that I didn’t have to say goodbye to my R1.00 forever. After about 200m the sheer discomfort of my slops reminded me why I was heading home in the first place and the whole exciting adventure was turning into a bit of a chore. I persisted however and eventually made my way down some dodgy stairs. At the foot of the stairs I had to pass a little posse of rebellious teens having a crisis because two of them were not seeing eye to eye on something. It was as if their little world’s were coming to an end and one of the girls was close to tears and one of the guys was smoking a cigarette in complete angst as if Armageddon was about to befall us all. I whipped past them and started looking for the parking management office. Thanks to two massive signs with arrows I could find the miniscule passage I had to go down to find justice. This missing R1.00 started taking on a whole new meaning on my journey, it was like a long lost lamb, who needed to be found after the sheep had been counted and one found missing. I needed to rescue it from the wolves and bears in the wild and return it to the safety of my wallet.

I finally arrived at the bullet proof window to find the parking manager dude in front of a command centre with CCTV feeds from all the parking entrances at the mall. It was impressive. Eventually he came over to see what my query was and said: “You came all this way for R1.00? You really need that R1.00 hey?” I replied “Yes I do. It is my R1.00 and now I have it back.” He laughed and I started my way back to the car with a sense of accomplishment. I had restored balance in my wallet, what was mine and stolen had been returned. All was well.

PS: Maybe I am a lunatic, I walked about 500m for R1.00 which works out to 20 cents per 100m, not a very profitable scheme but hey at least I got some exercise. Now ask yourself this question: have I ever been paid to exercise?