Features

Road Rage is Not Confined to the Road Ways

Avis Worthington
Tuesday June 15, 2004

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s not just drivers going crazy these days. Parkers have reached a point where they’re a danger to life and limb. As far as customer service, forget it. 

Recently my battery failed at Berkeley Bowl parking lot. I had more than $1 50 worth of perishable food in my steaming trunk. The Berkeley Bowl’s customer service employee, a younger woman, added to my problems, insisting that she couldn’t help me and that after all, I didn’t need to shop there. Her only advice to me was to ask s omeone in the parking lot for a jump, which resulted in my tying up the time of a very nice young man, who was finally unable to help and nervously left after a half hour when another customer went into road rage and called the police on us. So much for a good Samaritan. 

Yes, I admit, by this time I was swearing. 

Another employee, realizing that customer service had failed totally to help me, took my ice cream into the cooler, guided me to a pay phone and spoke soothing words.  

I decided after witnessi ng a bad scene in the parking lot months ago that Berkeley Bowl needed to hire a parking attendant. The fact that they don’t is one reason I limit my shopping there. In discussing these happenings with other group members of my organization of elderly peo ple, the Gray Panthers, I found that one of the members had earlier written to Berkeley Bowl about hiring an attendant who could solve these matters quickly and with only a few words. Long’s Drugs, for instance, has an attendant in a very small lot. I spo ke to him today and he said that, yes, people get crazy in parking lots.  

Life is too short to spend two hours wrangling in the parking lot. I don’t know if it is possible to pass a city ordinance requiring lots with a large degree of traffic have an att endant, but I will certainly suggest it. 

Once I was able to telephone AAA and rescue my melting ice cream, my problem was easily solved. 

Avis Worthington