I Never Saw that Car Again
I live in an apartment building that has end-to-end parking for two spaces per apartment, and access to the parking levels (1-5) are done via a locked automatic roller door, which people can only get through if they have a remote for it (or sneak through behind someone else).
I only have a single car, and sometimes I let my friends park in the space in front of my car if they give me notice, so I generally park at the back of the double space.
Earlier this year, a random car began parking in front of mine on Friday afternoons, meaning I couldn’t go out with my car on Friday nights. Annoying, but not the biggest issue when you live super close to the city.
This continued nearly every week over about five weeks when I didn’t park my car at the front of the bay (which I began doing), but times I planned to leave the space free for friends coming over or whatever, the car appeared again.
I made repeated attempts to stop this behavior by leaving notes, which escalated into leaving print outs of a photo of the car with the license plate clearly visible and an explanation that if it happened again I’d press charges and/or have the vehicle towed.
Well, it happened again, and this time it was still there Saturday afternoon when I had been planning on going away with a group of my friends.
My guess is, someone went out on Friday and decided to pick up the car “later,,” not concerning themselves with the inconvenience it caused anyone else. It clearly hadn’t moved, as my aggressive note telling them to screw off was still there sitting limply under their wiper blades.
I figured enough was enough, it was time to have the vehicle towed. I called building management and eventually calling a towing company, who refused to help because the space was on the third floor, and they can’t get any trucks up to that level because of the height and space restrictions.
Ordinarily, most people would be pretty much screwed at this point, and I will admit I briefly considered sitting on the hood of the car until the jerk came to pick it up while sending my friends on their way without me, but they would have had to work out for transport as one car wouldn’t have cut it.
Fortunately for me however, my parents only live 30 minutes away, and have a garage where I work on one of my cars that’s getting at the tail end of a minor restoration.
One of the things I use pretty often is a set of Vehicle Positioning Jacks, to jam my project car right up against the wall of the garage to minimize the space it takes up.
For anyone that doesn’t know, Vehicle Positioning Jacks are basically devices that slot under each wheel, then lift the car up on hydraulics so you can free wheel it in any direction.
While I hadn’t originally gone to retrieve them, when I had to take my project car off them, a bright idea came to my head. None of my friends minded spending an extra hour to screw someone over that had interfered with us, so we grabbed the jacks, and went back, propped the car up, and wheeled it out.
Six guys can easily move around a small hatchback, so we pushed across the level slowly and carefully, to an area where there isn’t parking, but is a load-supporting pillar with space enough for a car behind it, in a little section of the garage where it isn’t lit, and is completely out of the way.
Typically there’s a guy on my level that parks a motor bike there, but he isn’t meant to, and I doubted he minded. We dumped it between the pillar and the wall, with the nose pointing towards the wall, I took back my angry note, the jacks, and we left to enjoy our weekend.
When he came back Monday afternoon after the long weekend, the car was still there, which was no real surprise considering there was only about a foot of space for movement between the pillar and car, and another foot or so between the car and the wall.
From the fact the front wheels had changed, we’re guessing they did try to get it out, unsuccessfully. It eventually went later in the week, though I’m not exactly sure how they managed it. I never saw that car again.