At some point during your third conversation with a building employee who has no idea what you're talking about, it will occur to you that parking validation might not actually exist. That it is, perhaps, a collective hallucination — a rumor passed down through generations of office park visitors, whispered at the elevator bank, referenced on signs that lead to other signs that lead to a wall.
You will dismiss this thought. You will continue your quest. This is your journey now.
The Sign That Started Everything
It always begins with a sign. A small, laminated, slightly crooked sign near the parking garage entrance that says something like VALIDATION AVAILABLE — SEE LOBBY. Sometimes there's a little arrow. The arrow points toward a door. The door leads to a hallway. The hallway has no additional signage.
This is the first test.
You pass it by choosing a direction with the confidence of someone who definitely knows where they're going. You do not know where you're going. Nobody in the history of parking validation has ever known where they're going. The sign was designed by someone who has never needed to use the information it contains.
The First Employee Encounter
The lobby security desk seems like the logical place to start. The person sitting behind it has the expression of someone who has been asked about parking validation before — many times, by many people, across many years — and has developed a practiced response that sounds helpful while committing to nothing.
"Oh, validation? Yeah, you want to go up to the third floor. Suite 300, I think. Or maybe 310. Check with them."
You thank them sincerely. You take the elevator to the third floor. Suite 300 is a dermatology office. Suite 310 is locked. There is a handwritten note on the door of Suite 310 that says Back at 2pm. It is 2:17pm.
This is the second test. You are failing it.
The Growing Suspicion That This Is Personal
By the time you've visited the second floor (sent there by a woman in Suite 300 who was very apologetic and also clearly had no idea), you begin to develop a theory.
The theory is that the parking garage is conducting a behavioral study. That somewhere, in a room filled with monitors, researchers are watching you navigate between floors and taking notes. The study has been running since 2009. You are not the first subject. You will not be the last.
This theory is not rational. You are aware of this. You are also on your fourth elevator ride in twenty minutes, so rationality has become something of a luxury.
The second floor sends you back to the lobby. The lobby sends you to a machine near the parking entrance that you walked directly past when you came in. The machine requires a receipt from a participating merchant. You do not have a receipt. You were here for a meeting, not a purchase. The machine does not care about your meeting.
The Fine Print Revelation
Eventually — through a combination of perseverance, a helpful stranger who had completed this same quest on a previous visit and retained the institutional knowledge — you find the right person. They have a stamp. An actual physical stamp, like it's 1987, sitting on a desk next to a dish of paper clips and a motivational calendar.
They stamp your ticket.
You take the elevator back to the garage, slide the ticket into the machine, and watch the total update.
The validation covered the first fifteen minutes.
You have been in the building for one hour and eleven minutes.
The amount saved by this entire expedition is $3.50. The parking total is now $8.50 instead of $12. You stare at this number for a moment that stretches in a way that time does not normally stretch.
The Math Nobody Wants to Do
Here is the calculation you will not perform out loud, because performing it out loud would require acknowledging something uncomfortable: you spent approximately forty-five minutes obtaining $3.50 in savings.
That is an effective hourly rate of roughly $4.67, which is below the federal minimum wage and also below the cost of the coffee you bought while waiting for the Suite 310 person to return at 2pm (they did not return at 2pm).
You will not do this math. You will instead feel the quiet satisfaction of someone who worked the system, got what was coming to them, and did not let the building win.
The building won. The building always wins. But you got your stamp, and that has to count for something.
Yep, that's a thing.
