Parking Attendants and Security Guards...Julie's Rant of the Week

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-)

One summer when I was a little girl, the house that we lived in was inundated with a particularly large amount of flies. They were everywhere, it seemed, and it aggravated me. One day I questioned my mother as to what possible good these filthy little insects could serve. Ever wise and patient, she responded that everything has a purpose, even the flies. Even if it wasn't immediately obvious, it was there nonetheless.

The other day I was reminded of something that has irritated me for some time now. I went to meet Jill, parked in the Barnes and Noble parking lot, and was confronted with the source of my vexation. It seems that there is a parking attendent for this tiny lot. It is his job to....well, that has yet to be determined officially. You see, in his advanced age he finds it necessary to cling to what he considers productive life. He has a job. He sits on a lawn chair and wears a safari hat strikingly similar to the one that the guy on Wild Kingdom used to wear. Periodically he gets up and blocks traffic amiably talking to some pitying person trying desperately to escape and drive away. Now I'll grant you that I'm no expert at the parking attendant game. I have no personal experience or training, I must admit. But shouldn't he be perhaps directing parking? Shouldn't he be assuring that the patrons of his vast kingdom that is a parking lot be patrons, too, of the businesses that own the private lot? And shouldn't he be assuring that people park reasonably well, as opposed to taking up two spots? Evidently not. Some slob in an SUV took up two places right directly in front of the damned lawn chair, our friend didn't even acknowledge me when I drove in to find my spot (maybe he saw the look of contempt on my face and was frightened....), and he didn't see that I completely ignored the businesses who own the lot and went instead to a coffee shop on the opposite block.

This phenomenon is all too common, a symptom of a pitying society. Our society feels that we must pity and indulge these members of the elderly population in their regression to almost childlike incompetence. It's sad, really. The people were at one time presumably competent. As functioning members of society they would never have accepted handout jobs like this and congratulations for working, being praised like children who remembered to brush their teeth. Unfortunately the problem is more serious. While parking attendents are unimportant, unable to do any real damage, many elderly people are allowed to take jobs of importance.

My first direct exposure to this was when I was just starting out in medicine. My first job was at a methadone clinic, working as a phlebotomist and receptionist. For anyone unfamiliar with methadone, it a widely used synthetic opiate used (in theory) to assist heroin and other opiate abusers to stop using their illegal drugs. So what you find in a methadone clinic is a bunch of addicted people going through extremely severe physical and psychological withdrawals. Anyone can be an addict, anyone can have a problem. There were business people, mothers and fathers, grandparents, and of course the stereotypical homeless. Mental illness and drug addiction go hand in hand, dozens of other health problems correlate with it as well. So what we're looking at here is a large group of people with very large likelihood of violence, mental illness events, and emotional upset. So a security guard would be advisable, certainly. And while we're at it, let's choose one that is somewhat cultured and civilized, at least enough to comprehend that these are not in fact social deviants, animals for all intensive purposes, and who would treat them accordingly. Well it seems that this kind of security guard was in short supply when I worked there. We had a man who was in his 80's, shorter than me, and a biggot. Yep. MmmmHmmm. This put us, our clients, and least importantly, the old man all in danger. Danger! And why? Because someone felt sorry for the bastard. This is lunacy...really.