I work in a public library.
Which means I work for a municipally-subsidized entity.
Which means I work for the city.
The parking lot for our building is owned by, you guessed it, the city.
It is a paid lot. Flat-rate full days.
As city employees who park on city-owned land to work for a city-funded entity which contributes to high literacy and thus to the overall education, potential, and productivity of the city's residents ...
... we pay for our own parking.
We work for them, they pay us bi-weekly, while in the meantime we pay them daily.
You'd think as an employee of a city organization, that the city would perhaps not charge us to park in city-owned lots. Maybe they'd give us parking passes, since we do happen to work for them, after all.
When you think about it, how often do private-sector companies charge their own workers to park in the company parking lot? Doesn't. Happen. Much.
Yet here we are, getting ripped for parking fees every day by the very organization which employs us. There is something very wrong with the notion of employers charging their own employees for the right to park on the organization's property.
Worst. Cash-grab. Ever.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The Parking Situation
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7 comments:
Isn't what you're describing called "Workin' for the Man"?
How about "Serfdom"?
The 'Man' doesn't charge his people for the right to come in and do their jobs - he pays them to actually come in and do their jobs.
Or at least, he's supposed to. My situation - and that of many city employees across the land - is closer to this:
"Okay, Joe. You're hired. I'll pay you $X per hour, but you have to pay $x per hour back to me for the right to even be here."
Workin' for the Man. Who's rippin' me off.
Great, now I've got "Proud Mary" stuck in my head. Thanks bud.
Not that it's a BAD song - just way too overplayed. The rest of the CCR back catalogue is much better. Personally, "Graveyard Train", "Long As I Can See The Light", and "Who'll Stop The Rain" do it for me.
My favourite's still "Run Through the Jungle". Some serious Viet Nam vibe courses through the veins of that song. A great song, too, to jam with a band. Fire up the hookah and run....
Gman,
I know, it's sad when the model for government is the tax man, which is the government afterall. The point is to tax every cash transaction possible. EVERY time cash is spent, traded, changed hands, inherited, invested, etc. Every transaction. So, in light of this default position, it seems only natural that staff would be charged to come to work at a government-adminstered workplace.
Ironic, though, that in this day and age of no free parking (both literally and figuratively) there is actually one place that's free: the public library. Just not the parking....
BTW, another librarian's trying his hand in the blogosphere here, albeit from my perch on the west coast: http://metropolisofmind.wordpress.com/
ciao, JH
San Francisco City employees also pay for their own parking in most cases, but they are sold a monthly parking pass.
I take public transit to work, though. My private company doesn't pay for parking 'cause in SF that would be ridiculous.
Yeah, I hear that, JH. It's pretty ridiculous, though, that the organization paying me to be there is the same organization charging me to be there ... a bit paradoxical, no?
Hope everything is going well out on the coast, bud, and that S and Z are doing well, also.
Later
G
Cath:
Paid parking in the private sector? That's a bummer. Don't see it much up here, although depending which city you're in, it does happen.
I'd love to do the public transport thing to work each day, but the schedules don't quite align, given the rather high number of transfers involved. But that's what happens when you live on one side of town and work on the other.
Stay well,
G
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