What a way to start the day.

They've been fixing some plumbing in the ceiling above our parking space, so last night, the maintenance guy told me that he'd cleared it with the manager for us to park in the alley/fire lane that runs between the two buildings and that there'd be no problems. It seems as if the manager forgot she'd had that discussion because last night at 11pm, they came along and stuck a warning sticker on the car window, then proceeded to tow it before dawn (as if we're expected to get up in the middle of the night and check the car?). So, I got up this morning to go to work and the car is gone. And the sign on the manager's door says the office is closed today. I tracked down the maintenance guy, and he calls the manager (who is, btw, holed up in her office/apartment, just not answering the phone or door), who then tells him that she "doesn't want to speak with him" (him, being me). Funny. Isn't a big part of your job as building manager to deal with problems, especially ones you caused? Even on your day off? After a couple of angry messages left on the answering machine, she deigns to call _darkvictory, only to hang up on her (through the manager claims the phone simply went dead), which sent us to her door, letting her know we knew she was there and wouldn't be going away. Then she tells us to pay the towing fee and we could deduct it from next month's rent. At which point, I told her, no, what she was going to do was call the impound lot, instruct them to immediately release the car to me at no charge and send her the bill, and that she'd better hope that there was no damage to the car during the tow, because she'd be paying for that as well. I think I scared her a little. I'm a big guy, and I can get loud.

I now have the car back, at no charge to me, but there's a flourescent orange sticker on the driver's window, just where it obscures my vision, so I have to drive with the window down until I can get some GooGone and remove the sticker (because, of course, they're designed to be very difficult to remove).

I'm not a happy camper. Today is deadline/go to press day, and I had a stack of 49 pages of proofs on my desk waiting for final corrections and sign-off. Luckily, changes were extremely minimal and the PITAs in proprietary products didn't ask us to make their logos the size of Nebraska this month (at the expense of other manufacturers logos, photos, and copy). So it could have been worse, but stil...