August 7, 2003

Guys Near My Work

Near my work there are these two parking lots. Well, one’s a lot and the other’s a garage, actually. But still, they’re in competition for any passing vehicles looking for a place to park. Both the lot and the garage employ a guy each who wears dungarees or Dickies or whatever and they’ve given each of them an orange flag and posted them in the middle of the street to wave potential customers from the oncoming traffic into their respective lots. Every time a car approaches they both freak out and start waving their flags, directing the car into their own parking lot. When the car, predictably, simply drives on, they cease the manic waving.

And they’re out there all day long, waving, not waving, waving, not waving. Over and over. And they stand about four feet apart from each other, and actually exhibit some degree of animosity toward each other. Like, they don’t chit-chat or fraternize at all. These guys are actually determined to beat each other out for the customers. Which is strange, really, because you’d think – I’d think, anyway – that a workplace that made you stand in the middle of a fairly busy street would be one that you wouldn’t bust it so hard to please.

But recently I’ve seen them getting along a lot better. That is, at least, that they’ve found common ground in watching pretty girls walk by and having fairly in-depth discussions about what they liked about the ladies, and what they didn’t like. The scenario goes like this: Girl walks by, they stop waving their flags (like, a semi could go by, and that flag won’t move when they’re woman-watching), they train their gaze on her until she’s either walked sufficiently by that they would actually have to turn around to keep watching her or they’ve finalized their positions on her desirable and undesirable points.

I don’t care much for these guys, and I’m sure none of the passing women think much of them either, but I believe that whichever of them tries to wave a woman into his lot by using the flag in the same way he does for cars will score big points for having a sense of humor. Maybe they just haven’t yet determined that they’ve found the lady worthy of their flag-waving.