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Or "I should've just had toast...."
Let me say this up front: I'm fine. This whole incident never got beyond yelling.
This past Friday capped off an unbelievably bad week at work. There were several different misunderstandings and other failures to communicate that at one point led to a very heated argument, among other issues i had, and then this happened.....
Friday I was scheduled to cover a site only about 20 minutes from my house. That morning, I poured a bowl of cereal for breakfast only to discover that the last of my milk had gone bad. Since I had extra time and the site was close by, I decided to put the cereal into a portable container and just go to work. I knew the cafeteria would be open and I could just grab a small bottle of milk there.
No big deal, right? Well, that turned out to be a mistake.
This particular site has a pretty decent size free parking garage. I was driving down the road alongside the garage and was just starting to turn right into the garage driveway when an SUV coming the other way down the same road started to turn LEFT into the garage. The guy driving it had clearly been trying to beat me into the garage but badly misjudged the time he had to make the turn and almost broadsided me. Luckily we both stopped in plenty of time, and I just proceeded into the garage with him behind me.
For the record, I had the right of way, I wasn't speeding, and I had properly signaled for the turn. He had signaled also but failed to yield to oncoming traffic like he is supposed to. Had he hit me, he'd have been found instantly at fault and his insurance would've had to buy me a new car (and pay for any injuries I might've suffered).
Now, whenever I have a close call like that I get wary of the other person. We've all heard horror stories about people going berserk over perceived transgressions on the road, and for obvious reasons I have no desire to experience it for myself. Unfortunately, since we were both turning into the same garage, there was no real way to know if he was following me or not, so I deliberated passed over a nearly empty parking level and proceeded up to the next one in the hopes that he'd just park and let me be.
No such luck, he stayed behind me and parked two spaces down from my car. I kept the windows up, the doors locked, and the key in the ignition while watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He came right up to my passenger side window, banged on it and started shouting at me.
Road Raging Asshole: Hey, that was a pretty shitty move you pulled down there, you know that?? You knew i was turning but you were FLYING and just HAD to beat me! *rant rant rant rant rant* Why don't you go fuck yourself! *flips me the bird*
Me (Yes, I know I shouldn't have said this but by this point I was in fight or flight mode and wasn't thinking clearly): You know something, you too! And if you'd hit me you;d have been found at fault int he insurance claim!
RRA (seeing the company logo on my work shirt): You work for [company]???? You wanna keep working here???? I'm a DIRECTOR of [client company] and I can make sure you never work here again - and that your company never works with us again - if you want to take this further!!!ELEVENTY!!!
I decided not to push my luck any further and didn't respond, and he stomped away.
I waited until he'd disappeared into the stairway before rather shakily getting out of the car. While i was fumbling around with my stuff trying to remember exactly what I needed to bring in, I saw a security guard walking up the parking ramp from the level below.
Guard: Are you ok?
Me: I'm fine except for what just happened with that guy *points to the SUV*
Guard: What happened?
Me: *explains*
Guard: Do you want to file an incident report?
I was still rather shaken up at this point and told the guard that I would prefer to avoid any more trouble and would rather just forget it happened. He said he'd make a note of it in the security log and that if there was any more problems - or if I changed my mind - there would be a record of it. I didn't know it at the time but the guard had heard everything the guy said.
At this point I started heading in, then after a moment's reflection decided to move my car up to the next parking level. I just didn't want to risk staying parked only two spaces down from this asshole, lest I find my tires slashed or something.
I went in, got the milk, and rather mindlessly ate my breakfast (I don't remember even tasting it). Then I went down to our area and told my colleagues what had just happened. In telling the story, it occurred to me that the guy had already forced my hand by leveling a threat against my company's contract with [client company], to say nothing of threatening ME.
So I called my manager, who also happens to be the account manager for this particular site. I left a long voicemail explaining what had just happened, and then went back out to the garage to get the guy's plate number. On the way I bumped into the same security guard, who asked for and took down my name so he could put that in with the log entry.
While I was gone, my boss called the site and said he was coming right over. When he got there I walked him through the entire event, then we went out to the garage and I showed him where everything had happened. He fully agreed with me that I had had the right of way and that it didn't look like I'd done anything wrong.
Then we went back in to talk to security. As luck would have it, I again bumped into the same guard, and he radioed his supervisor to join us.
My boss did most of the talking. He explained that he wanted to see if we could figure out who this guy is from his vehicle information (if he'd been wearing a badge when he confronted me, I didn't see it). We all doubted that the guy really was a director, since it had been pointed out that if he was, he wouldn't be parking in the garage with the rest of the peons, nor would he be driving a 10-year-old mid-range SUV. But on the off-chance he was, my boss wanted to try and diffuse the situation lest it come back to bite us later, not to mention the fact he was pretty peeved that someone had threatened me.
They looked up the guy's plate number in the parking permit database.
He was a kitchen supervisor. Not only that, but he wasn't even an employee of the client company since - like mine - his company was an outside contractor. AND the security supervisor told us that they had decided to go with a different vendor for the kitchen so he was going to be gone from here in a couple of weeks anyway once the current contract expired.
To say that my boss was exasperated would be vastly understating matters (not at me of course, He agreed that I'd made the right call by notifying him of the incident). The security supervisor was also pissed, since the incident had occurred on company property and the asshole had misrepresented himself in an attempt to intimidate me. He said "we don't need hotheads here" and assured the both of us that he would be bringing this to the attention of the Director of Security (a real director, not a pretend one :P) and that it WOULD be dealt with. He also went on at length about how much Client Company loves my company and heaped praise on us for all the quality work we do.
Of course, who knows what exactly he meant by "it will be dealt with" but at least I can rest easy knowing that he was just an asshole, and one who'll be gone soon anyway.
So in the end it seems to have worked out. With just a little luck I'll never see that guy again. But I mean really, had I known that this would've happened I'd have just stayed home and made some toast instead. I still can't quite believe that this happened and that I was forced to have to escalate it to my boss and....ugh....rotten rotten morning.
Let me say this up front: I'm fine. This whole incident never got beyond yelling.
This past Friday capped off an unbelievably bad week at work. There were several different misunderstandings and other failures to communicate that at one point led to a very heated argument, among other issues i had, and then this happened.....
Friday I was scheduled to cover a site only about 20 minutes from my house. That morning, I poured a bowl of cereal for breakfast only to discover that the last of my milk had gone bad. Since I had extra time and the site was close by, I decided to put the cereal into a portable container and just go to work. I knew the cafeteria would be open and I could just grab a small bottle of milk there.
No big deal, right? Well, that turned out to be a mistake.
This particular site has a pretty decent size free parking garage. I was driving down the road alongside the garage and was just starting to turn right into the garage driveway when an SUV coming the other way down the same road started to turn LEFT into the garage. The guy driving it had clearly been trying to beat me into the garage but badly misjudged the time he had to make the turn and almost broadsided me. Luckily we both stopped in plenty of time, and I just proceeded into the garage with him behind me.
For the record, I had the right of way, I wasn't speeding, and I had properly signaled for the turn. He had signaled also but failed to yield to oncoming traffic like he is supposed to. Had he hit me, he'd have been found instantly at fault and his insurance would've had to buy me a new car (and pay for any injuries I might've suffered).
Now, whenever I have a close call like that I get wary of the other person. We've all heard horror stories about people going berserk over perceived transgressions on the road, and for obvious reasons I have no desire to experience it for myself. Unfortunately, since we were both turning into the same garage, there was no real way to know if he was following me or not, so I deliberated passed over a nearly empty parking level and proceeded up to the next one in the hopes that he'd just park and let me be.
No such luck, he stayed behind me and parked two spaces down from my car. I kept the windows up, the doors locked, and the key in the ignition while watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He came right up to my passenger side window, banged on it and started shouting at me.
Road Raging Asshole: Hey, that was a pretty shitty move you pulled down there, you know that?? You knew i was turning but you were FLYING and just HAD to beat me! *rant rant rant rant rant* Why don't you go fuck yourself! *flips me the bird*
Me (Yes, I know I shouldn't have said this but by this point I was in fight or flight mode and wasn't thinking clearly): You know something, you too! And if you'd hit me you;d have been found at fault int he insurance claim!
RRA (seeing the company logo on my work shirt): You work for [company]???? You wanna keep working here???? I'm a DIRECTOR of [client company] and I can make sure you never work here again - and that your company never works with us again - if you want to take this further!!!ELEVENTY!!!
I decided not to push my luck any further and didn't respond, and he stomped away.
I waited until he'd disappeared into the stairway before rather shakily getting out of the car. While i was fumbling around with my stuff trying to remember exactly what I needed to bring in, I saw a security guard walking up the parking ramp from the level below.
Guard: Are you ok?
Me: I'm fine except for what just happened with that guy *points to the SUV*
Guard: What happened?
Me: *explains*
Guard: Do you want to file an incident report?
I was still rather shaken up at this point and told the guard that I would prefer to avoid any more trouble and would rather just forget it happened. He said he'd make a note of it in the security log and that if there was any more problems - or if I changed my mind - there would be a record of it. I didn't know it at the time but the guard had heard everything the guy said.
At this point I started heading in, then after a moment's reflection decided to move my car up to the next parking level. I just didn't want to risk staying parked only two spaces down from this asshole, lest I find my tires slashed or something.
I went in, got the milk, and rather mindlessly ate my breakfast (I don't remember even tasting it). Then I went down to our area and told my colleagues what had just happened. In telling the story, it occurred to me that the guy had already forced my hand by leveling a threat against my company's contract with [client company], to say nothing of threatening ME.
So I called my manager, who also happens to be the account manager for this particular site. I left a long voicemail explaining what had just happened, and then went back out to the garage to get the guy's plate number. On the way I bumped into the same security guard, who asked for and took down my name so he could put that in with the log entry.
While I was gone, my boss called the site and said he was coming right over. When he got there I walked him through the entire event, then we went out to the garage and I showed him where everything had happened. He fully agreed with me that I had had the right of way and that it didn't look like I'd done anything wrong.
Then we went back in to talk to security. As luck would have it, I again bumped into the same guard, and he radioed his supervisor to join us.
My boss did most of the talking. He explained that he wanted to see if we could figure out who this guy is from his vehicle information (if he'd been wearing a badge when he confronted me, I didn't see it). We all doubted that the guy really was a director, since it had been pointed out that if he was, he wouldn't be parking in the garage with the rest of the peons, nor would he be driving a 10-year-old mid-range SUV. But on the off-chance he was, my boss wanted to try and diffuse the situation lest it come back to bite us later, not to mention the fact he was pretty peeved that someone had threatened me.
They looked up the guy's plate number in the parking permit database.
He was a kitchen supervisor. Not only that, but he wasn't even an employee of the client company since - like mine - his company was an outside contractor. AND the security supervisor told us that they had decided to go with a different vendor for the kitchen so he was going to be gone from here in a couple of weeks anyway once the current contract expired.
To say that my boss was exasperated would be vastly understating matters (not at me of course, He agreed that I'd made the right call by notifying him of the incident). The security supervisor was also pissed, since the incident had occurred on company property and the asshole had misrepresented himself in an attempt to intimidate me. He said "we don't need hotheads here" and assured the both of us that he would be bringing this to the attention of the Director of Security (a real director, not a pretend one :P) and that it WOULD be dealt with. He also went on at length about how much Client Company loves my company and heaped praise on us for all the quality work we do.
Of course, who knows what exactly he meant by "it will be dealt with" but at least I can rest easy knowing that he was just an asshole, and one who'll be gone soon anyway.
So in the end it seems to have worked out. With just a little luck I'll never see that guy again. But I mean really, had I known that this would've happened I'd have just stayed home and made some toast instead. I still can't quite believe that this happened and that I was forced to have to escalate it to my boss and....ugh....rotten rotten morning.
glad you're okay! What a douchenozzle.
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