The Politics of Spaces

More than anything, the people in my office want the good parking spaces. More money is good too, but they can’t control how this plays out. They take what they’re given with only minor grumbling and leave it at that until the next year when another review comes around and once again their income inches up ever so slightly. No, what the people in my office really want is a prime parking space in the small but coveted deck beneath the building. Getting a spot down below is the surest sign that things are really looking up in ones career.

This little deck down below holds only about 20 cars and they’re packed in so tightly that dings and scratches become an accepted inevitability. Of course, no one cares about that, not when deck terrain is up for grabs.

The most curious parking spot behavior comes on the days when one of the chosen ones, someone from upper management with one of the assigned spots, goes on vacation. On these days look out. Because when it’s known that so-and-so with such-and-such assigned spot is going to take a little family trip to Disneyland or Dollywood or to the beach, and that spot goes up for grab, all hell breaks loose. People will go to great and sinister lengths to get that spot, if even for just a little while.

And on these days in-fighting runs rampant as the spot is staked out, stalked, hovered over, and quickly seized on a first come, first park basis. Some employees who will remain nameless, but who know who they are, will even show up hours before work–way earlier than they ever would on normal days–just to seize the spot and defiantly park their non-assigned-parking car in a parking space of distinction.

On one occasion it was alleged that a certain particularly overzealous employee would spend hours monitoring the security cams waiting for VP of Marketing Brian Stone’s briefly available assigned spots to open up. That morning some guy from creative had the spot after pulling an all-nighter. Upon seeing the temporary keeper of the spot leave for lunch, this employee dashed downstairs and ran to his car so he could move it into the assigned spot, therefore temporarily moving up in the parking hierarchy. This pissed some people off.

Sure, he knew this was going to be short lived. He knew if would ruffle feathers, but he didn’t care. Being there, if even briefly, felt so good that the scorn and whispers of unethical spot taking was worth it. Or as one employee once said to me, “He has nothing better to do than to wait for one of the good spots. I wish I had it like that.” Indeed they did have it like that. Because soon after everyone had figured out that they too could access the security cams, an open spot would turn into a free for all with people leaping whole flights of stairs, shoving their way past the slower, weaker employees in a desperate attempt to feel important and reserved for just a little while.

But here’s the kicker: There was one non-assigned spot in the deck. One spot toward the end that the average employee could park in. This spot no one cared about for a couple of reasons. One, it wasn’t assigned. Two, it represented the last of what was a vanishing reality as more and more “executives” where hired and we all knew that we were really just one more Senior VP of Something Or Other away from losing that, too .

All of this combined to make the pursuit of the infrequently vacant assigned spaces all the more tenuous. In fact, the jockeying for them got down right ugly later that fall. The most glaring example was when Executive Vice President of Compliance Milly Van decided to take her family to Six Flags Over Georgia. We all knew about it because word of this stuff got around fast. Rita Smith, Milly’s next in command, felt she had a God-given right to that spot based on claims of legitimate administrative succession. That is until Pauline Keller, a relatively new employee in PR, accidently beat her to it. This is when all hell broke loose around the office.

Pauline Keller claims she simply came in early–5 am early–to get a head start on the week as she later explained when I bumped into her filing her water bottle in the sink. In doing so she beat Rita Smith to the office and grabbed the spot. According to Pauline she new nothing of administrative succession and had simply made an innocent mistake. Either way, she had the spot and everyone knew she rarely took lunch and rarely left the office which meant that Rita would have to wait all day and probably into the next to get Milly’s vacant spot. This drove Rita crazy.

No one has ever died or been injured over a parking spot, but if that were to ever happen if would have happened on this day. A witness who I won’t name told me that he was walking through the deck beneath the building when Rita arrived, pulled into the deck and spotted the black SUV with the “P-Lean” plates. She pulled up to the bumper of the SUV, paused, screamed, made what were described as “really obscene gestures that clearly included profanities that couldn’t be heard over Christina Aguillera” before backing out and parking in the same old space she always parked out among the minions.

After this, things between Rita and Pauline where never quite the same. Making matters worse, that entire day was tense and we all walked on egg shells around Rita and went to great lengths to avoid her instead putting off discussing any non-essential projects until the next day. That was until Jared Mays was dumb enough to ask her about the spot colors on an ad we were trying to get out the door.

“Spot color?” sneered Rita. “Is that funny to you?” Poor Jared rode a bike to work as was for the most part insulated from the politics of spaces here at work so he was completely blind-sided on this one.

“What?”

“Spot. Are you in the conspiracy, too? Why does everyone in this building hate me?”

“Rita, I don’t–”

“Don’t play dumb, Jared. Just give me the stupid ad.” And with that she snatched the ad from poor Jared’s fingers sending him cowering back to his desk, completely baffled by what had happened.

For the record, the following day, Rita got to work even earlier and finally got to spend some deck time in what is normally Milly’s spot. Pauline later told me she didn’t see what the big deal was and suggested that Rita was childish and petty for letting a parking space cause tension between them. Or as she told me during another sink encounter, “Even boys have never gotten me in such hot water as that damn parking space.”

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that parking spaces below the offices of Marks and Partners Advertising make people crazy. I hope I never get one. I doubt I will. I’m not assigned parking material. I know that. So do those who give out the assignments.