Valet Parking

My hypothetical wife and I have been invited by our grand daughter and her boyfriend to have Thanksgiving dinner at the fancy restaurant where the boyfriend works. I have been told that they have valet parking there. I have only used that service twice in my life, both times being a long time ago, so I googled it to find out how much we are supposed to tip those guys nowadays. I found a site called "Manly Arts", that tells you all sorts of things that a modern male is supposed to know, one of them being the protocol that is expected of you if you want to use valet parking "without looking like a doofus". Too bad I didn't read something like that before my first valet parking experience back in the 60s.

I was home on leave from the army when I took my high school girlfriend to her senior prom. I borrowed my dad's car, and drove us downtown for the after prom dinner at Magnum's Chateau, where the food was not only expensive, but disappointing. As we were driving home from there, my girlfriend noticed a sign that advertised boat rides on the Chicago River, and she asked if we could do that. To my surprise, they were still running the boats at that late hour, so I pulled up to the gate where there was a "no parking" sign. This guy approached the car and told me that I couldn't park there, which I already knew, and I asked him where I could park. He said that I didn't have time for that because the last boat of the evening was leaving in a few minutes. He then told me that, if I gave him $2.00, he would take care of my car for me and have it waiting by the gate when we came back. I gave him the $2.00 and we got on the boat seconds before it pulled out.

When we got back, neither my dad's car or the guy was anywhere in sight. I figured that he had gone to get our car, or somebody else's car, and would be back shortly, but the other passengers quickly dispersed and the boat people were turning off lights and locking thing up. I asked the guy who had sold us our boat tickets where the guy was who parks the cars, and he said, "We don't have anybody who parks the cars." I then asked him who was the guy to whom I paid $2.00 to park my car. He then asked me if I had gotten a receipt or anything like that. When I sheepishly told him that I had not, he said "You're not from around here, are you?" The girlfriend asked me what was going on, and I explained that I had paid some crook $2.00 to steal my dad's car, and then asked the boat guy if I could use his phone to call the police. The boat guy asked me to describe the car, which I did. He then went around the corner and came back a few minutes later driving my dad's car. I asked him how he had found it so quickly, and he said, "That's where they always put them."

According to the "Manly Arts" article, I should have given the boat guy another $2.00 for bringing my car back, but I didn't know that at the time. I was kind of pissed at him anyway because he had first denied all knowledge of the car parking scheme, and then knew exactly where to find the car, as well as the fact that the keys were hidden behind the sun visor. Talking it over with the girlfriend on the way home, we deduced that the car parking guy indeed did not work for the boat people, but they knew him and were familiar with his routine. Seeing as it was the last boat for the night, he just went home after parking our car and had no intention of bringing it back for us. If the boat guy wanted a share of the $2.00, he should have taken it up with the car guy the next day, and maybe he did.