So its the Wife’s Birthday and the kids want to mark the occasion with a dinner out…. Its a school night but a birthday is a birthday and we must celebrate…. Where to go? Same old places or add a bit of Special Quality to the celebration.
Since its my call and me picking up the check as usual I decide to retry “POSTO 22” on Division Street. Heading from the North I turn onto Division and there are no meter spots, and no valet parking as it is Thursday Evening. It should be noted Friday and Saturday they do have valet Park..
Okay a quick left into the Avalon 2 parking lot which would never be my first choice but what the heck how can this be a problem.
The dinner was great, the food was delicious and the service could not have been better. No pretention just good quality in decent surrounding all making me feel like I need to do this more often.( Venturing Downtown that is)
The bill comes its just shy of 200.00 and for a family of 5 that is not bad by today’s standards and with the smile on the wife’s face what could be bad.
Heading back to the Avalon 2 to retrieve my vehicle I put the ticket into the machine noting the 2.00 parking fee which is less than 1% of my dinner charge and proceed to figure out how to swipe my credit card… It should be noted here that I am very digitally savy and with the blackberry and the multiple credit card swipes per week rarely have a difficult time with these things. So where does the credit card go. There is some international recognized symbal that looks like it goes where the cash might go. However no language to confirm this but what the hey its not going to eat my card! Well it ate my card held it captive and who knows might even have gone shopping with it. At this point thoughts of tomorrows lunch meeting with clients and my inability to pay as the machine was using my card were racing through my head… There was a help feature and a live person probably in the Avalon Somehwere said he could not help me. A few good wacks with my shoe brings out my credit card. Now what I need two bucks to run through the machine and all I have are a few 20’s. I start picking through my car and the wifes wallet and the the kids trousers to find 2 crumpled dollars. Eureka I was able to pay and escape card in hand with ticket to the gate arm exit. I must say given the choice of having to do this again no matter how good the dinning experience I may just have to pass on downtown as the machines just are not user friendly.
In hard times I can just about choose to go anywhere but you could be sure it won’t include any experience that has parking machines that have foreign methods of accepting payment. WhitePlains here we come next time. It should be noted that I stopped going to New Roc when their machines were having difficulty and have not gone back for months and have found better movies to attend.