If you can't beat them...

...join them.

You may remember my little rant from last summer, when I complained about having to pay extra to drive my husband's car to work and park in a faculty parking spot. I was less than thrilled to have to pay $35 each year to park at work to begin with, and thought it was pretty much a cardinal sin to ask employees to buy yet another parking permit if they wished to drive, say, their husband's brand new CR-V.

Well, you will be happy to know that as of this semester, all is well.

First, apparently my terse (i.e., pissed off) email to the dean, the chief of campus police, and the vice president of something or other apparently woke someone up, because as of this academic year, we can register for a second, free, parking permit. So no more hassle with a limited number of temporary permits, and having to drive to the police station to get said permit before you can drive to your office, park, and get to work. Your second car now has the same decal as your first car.
And DixieChick saw that it was good.

Second, I have also finally joined the ranks of the VIP cars on campus, which means I am now guaranteed a spot close to the building, no matter what time I come in to work. And all I had to do to earn that is forego every single one of my principles, which turned out to not be so difficult after all.

My university, like most institutions of higher learning in the US and Canada works with a complicated system of parking permits, each of which comes with a certain price tag. The lowest tiered drivers are the resident students. These are those students who live on campus. They receive a red parking permit, and get to park in the crappiest spots imaginable. It's not uncommon for a resident student to have to park a mile or more away from their dorm. The idea behind is, I'm guessing, that these students live on campus, and can therefore walk everywhere (and guess what, they would still rather walk to their car a mile away, drive two miles, park a mile away from class, and then walk into class. But I digress).
Then are the commuter students, who are the proud owners of an orange tag. As they don't live on campus, but have to drive in, the university figured they deserved a little more clemency, and awarded them about ten parking spots by each building. If you do the math, that still means that several hundred students will be parking goodness knows where (but not near any building), but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?
Then there is faculty/staff parking. They get the green permits, and the most spots by each building. And finally, there's reserved/VIP parking, which is, or well, used to be, for deans, provosts, presidents, and other figures far above the rest of us mere mortals. These people get the yellow decals, and have the spots right up against the curb next to the building they work in. They are, in short, the head honchos of parking.

This is how parking was arranged when I got here in 2007. And back then, it seemed fair enough. There were maybe two rows of yellow spots by my building, at least a hundred green spots, and no one ever had a problem finding a parking spot.

Well, in the 2008-09 academic year, the university realized that it was leaving a vast financial resource completely untapped, and opened up the VIP parking to any faculty or staff member willing to fork over almost three times as much as a faculty/staff permit. In the next two years, the VIP section grew slowly, from two to four to six rows.

Then last year, everything sort of went completely crazy. The university built a few new dorms, turned half the parking lot into a VIP section, gave the students more parking spots, and now the 100 + faculty members in my specific part of campus were fighting for maybe twenty five parking spots. Basically, if you arrived after 8am, you had to park with the resident students. And if you arrived after 9am, you were just plain s** out of luck, and you got to park in the "overflow" lot almost a mile away.

Now call me a wuss, but I couldn't stand it. Most days I would be able to nab a spot, but the pressure of having to get out of the house before 6:15 in order to get one was just crazy. And then on those days when I didn't get to work early enough, and would have to walk the mile to my office, I was just one extremely unhappy camper. Like I said, I probably need six weeks in basic training or something, but when I've gotten up at 5am, driven an hour and forty minutes, and then have to walk a mile while burdened with a laptop bag, lunch box, travel mug, and purse, I am pretty much ready to turn around and go home.

So this year I caved. I gave up on the idea that no one should have to pay to park at work, and signed up for a VIP spot. As these are handed out on a first come, first serve base, I figured I would be lucky if I got a spot in the far corner of the parking lot, but at least I would be in the lot next to my building, and not two fields and one football field down the road. Now I'm not sure what happened, to be honest with you, because when I happened to see the chief of police (he who was victim of my wrath this summer) and asked him about my spot, he told me, "Yeah, I gave you 195".
So I went looking for 195, starting at the far end of the lot. Nothing. I moved closer, nothing. That chief had better not be playing with me. I looked again, nothing. Then as I walked back to my building, I stepped up on the curb,  looked at the spots next to the building where all the deans and vice presidents parked, and saw number 195. It was right next to the last dean's spot, within stone's throw of the building's front door.

Cue harp music, clouds opening, and angels descending.

I was, and have been, in heaven ever since. I can't tell you how much I absolutely love coming into work and there being a spot waiting just for me. One entire month later, it still fills me with joy. Seriously.

So, what's the moral of the story?
Principles are nice, but a parking spot close to work is much, much nicer.