Originally posted by: waggy
Originally posted by: kranky
I'm practically in disbelief that this question was even asked, because it reminds me so much of something that happened while at a previous job. I swear this is a true story.
The owner of the company I worked for owned land on both sides of the dead-end street where the business was located. There was one business (TruckCo) farther down the road than his. He decided that since he owned the land on both sides of the road, then TruckCo ought to be paying him a fee to drive past his business, since it's logically his road. :roll:
He sent them a letter notifying them that they would need to start paying "rent" to drive past his business or else they would not be permitted to use the road. (Keep in mind, this is a public road!) Unsurprisingly, TruckCo ignored the letter. He sent another. Also ignored.
The owner didn't like being ignored so he had the maintenance chief pull a bulldozer across the road bright and early on a Monday, blocking all traffic to TruckCo. The TruckCo people start showing up for work and ask for the bulldozer to be moved. The owner goes outside to explain to the TruckCo folks that he told them twice they would have to start paying to use the road, and he wasn't moving the dozer.
A TruckCo person calls the police, and they ask the owner what he thinks he's doing. The owner calmly explains his grand scheme and then - get this - tells the police to get the TruckCo people to clear out. The policeman, listening in amazement, tells the owner he has two minutes to get the dozer out of the PUBLIC road. And then he asks the owner if he thinks every farmer in the midwest who happens to own land on both sides of an Interstate could put up a tollbooth. He loudly tells the owner so all the TruckCo people can hear that if he ever has to come back because the road is blocked, he's going to jail. Owner meekly goes back inside, and no one ever dared mention the incident in his presence.
bwhahahah NO way that can't be true! hahahah
oh my god. I would have to say something. getting fired is a small price to pay for the pleasure of calling the boss a dumbass.
I swear I read about this in the news...I wonder if I can find that article?
Anyway, this is a pet peeve of mine. I hate people that think they own the road just because it is in front of their house. You chose to live there. I just bought a house, and I consciously avoided any house that did not have at least a driveway to park my cars in because I absolutely HATE coming home and having to search for a spot 2 blocks away (I've done that before).
My long story on this is that across the street from my parents' beach house, there was 3-storey house being built. One day I came around midnight as I always do. There were pallets of paving stones along the curb (but not in the street - up next to the sidewalk). So I parked there as always.
The next afternoon after I got back from the beach, we noticed that there were now sawhorses all along the street, blocking the entire length of the curb from the corner to the neighbor's driveway - about 75 feet!
We saw a guy come out of the port-a-potty (also in the street) so my dad asks him why the sawhorses are there. Judging by the tools in his belt, he was a plumber, so of course this isn't his stuff so he doesn't know. My dad says "Well, we're gonna move them out of the street." He says "Sure..."
As we're moving, a mason pulls up and flips out that we are moving his sawhorses. He was mad enough that I didn't catch the subtle message sent by the pallets of paving stones. He claimed they were moving stuff by and he wasn't going to be held responsible if something should happen to a car parked there. He worded it in a way that sounded subtly threatening, so my dad told him that if anything happened to any car parked there, his name (written right on his truck) would be the first one given to the police.
At this point, an older guy shows up. Maybe a foreman? He seemed to have more authority than the mason and he asked what the trouble was in a way that suggested he was willing to work out a solution. We explained to him that the street is public, that the residents of the block expect to be able to park there, and that they can't just block the whole street.
He replies with a SOB STORY about how awful it is for the workers to have to carry their tools halfway up the street if they can't park right there :roll: It's a corner lot! They can park on the OTHER street! He then tried to tell us that our building (built in the 1930s) was not up to code since it didn't have 2 spots per unit (current code put in place in the 1980s)! Nevermind the REST of the block.
So we tell him "We understand your problem and we want to work with you. We appreciate your project increases our property values and the beauty of the area. How about you block off the space west of the port-a-potty and the remaining space you leave open - your workers can park in that space, but if other people get there first, too bad." Seems like a reasonable solution to me. That gives them about 2/3 of the 75 feet. Enough for 2-3 cars on our side, plenty of room for a few work vans on their side. They can always use it as a loading zone - park, drop your tools, then go park somewhere for real until you are done.
His response? "FORGET IT!" So we said "Fine. We're moving your sawhorses, we're parking wherever we want, and if the sawhorses come back, we're calling sanitation to clean up the garbage that someone left in the street." As we walk away. he gets all mad and says sarcastically, "Thanks for your cooperation!"
We both reeled around. "Do you even know what cooperation means? We offered to cooperate with you, and you aren't interested. So now you're going to have to cooperate with city law enforcement. Good day."
The saw horses disappeared the next day. Being "gentlemen," we parked east of the port-a-potty for the duration of the construction project. Even though he pissed all over our offer to compromise we wanted to show that we were the better people and we weren't going to block all the spaces just to be jerks. All we wanted was 2-3 spaces, and that's all we were going to take.
Jerks.
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