My Company's Parking Policy

This is an email conversation between myself and out office manager type thingy person, who spends most of his day being a parking nazi, walking around the car park at work, noting down registration numbers of car "illegally" parked in our staff car-park.

Now our staff car-park is quite small. There are about 65 spaces for 280 employees. It must be noted, however, that a large number of people do not drive into work, they either walk, bus or catch the train, and a great deal of those who do drive in park outside the car park, on the residential sideroads.

On this particular day, there was at least 12 empty parking spaces in our car park. I hope you'll agree, hardly a parking crisis.

Now I understand I broke the "rules", but isn't this a little harsh?
The bits in brackets are my comments.

Your car is in the car park again, and again without authorization.

Please move it now.

If it is in here again without prior and prior authorization I will insist that your manager undertakes a disciplinary hearing in line with policy. (a direct threat)

DB

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I will move it in ten minutes.

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And please make sure it stays out.

DB

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Moved.

Golly, whatever will you do when the new building has 280 parking spaces? :)

Oh come on, it’s a joke!

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It may be a joke to you but to me it’s a complete waste of my time when you and countless others take it on themselves to ignore policy, and repeated requests and notices. (amplifying my offence by lumping it in with the offences of everbody else)

If the new building only has 280 spaces then that is still 60+ short of our current staff compliment and therefore people who abuse the parking policy will find themselves first to be refused parking rights. (a vieled threat)

In that event I hope you’ll continue to see the funny side.

DB

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It really was just a joke.

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And from the Cambridge Dictionary……

Definition

beyond a joke
If something is beyond a joke, it has stopped being amusing and is now a serious matter:
I used to think he was funny, but his behaviour has now gone way beyond a joke.

So forgive me if I fail to see any humour in this whatsoever.

Painful isn’t it ? (not really sure what he means by this, what is painful? receiving all the emails from him? listening to his drivel? seeing him putting forward a fatally flawed argument?)

DB

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Ok, ok point taken. I was just trying to point out that I understand I had crossed the line, in a more friendly manner.

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The way to do that is say ‘sorry, it won’t happen again’ and then ensure that it doesn’t.

Given that we’d previously been through the same rigmarole can you not understand my frustration and annoyance?

Good, now add to that the 20 or more people who also consider it a ‘joke’ and you can further appreciate why it just isn’t funny.

What would be funny is if I let down the car tyres of everybody who parked in here without authorization/according to policy, or clamped them, or stuck pasted notices on their windscreens or any combination of these.

(maybe you should - let out some of that latent aggression? it might save you the jail time when you finally do explode and march down Isleworth high street with a hunting rifle)

I more than anybody would very much like to have a car park that catered for every member of staff regardless of how big or small that number maybe- however, what I have to manage is 340+ into 65……..and that just simply doesn’t go and therefore something has to give and people have to accept that.

I will take your last response to be your assurance that you will now adhere to policy and in so doing will bring this debate to an end.

DB