Jul. 11, 2006 - God bless little old women behind the wheel.

I am currently employed by one of the largest stores in a shopping centre that is owned and managed by AMP. About 4 months ago, the Centre Management expressed to employees that they would no longer be able to park where ever they wanted to. Instead, all employees would be required to park in the deepest, darkest, remotest (I love to make up words like Shakespeare) area of the complex. It's the sort of place you would chain up your psychotic, freakish cousin and throw stale bread at him....and your guests would come over and ask "What's that noise?" as his tormented screams reverberated through his chasm of lonliness....but I don't have a cousin like that nor do I live in the shopping centre....so I guess that's all a little fanciful.

Anyway, the way that centre management decided to enforce this new policy was by roping off all but 15 spaces near our staff entrance. The designated parking area was exactly on the opposite side of the enormous shopping centre and 3 floors down. Hardly convenient.

During Christmas, our trading hours were extended and my friend Lizzy and I were both finishing at 11pm. Lizzy lives close by to our work and doesn't drive so I offered to drive her home. Unfortunately, I had been forced to park where we were 'supposed' to. To this day I thank my lucky stars that I was driving Lizzy home that night because it took us 20minutes of clip-clopping in our pointy shoes to finally reach my car. This entailed walking through completely deserted car parks across the centre. Now I'm not exactly a damsel in distress. I'm very independent and it takes an awful lot for me to take a look around me and say "hmmm this situation isn't safe". If a car full of unsavoury characters had decided to cruise around this area in search of their next rape victims, I can't say that there would have been a lot we could have done. There was not a soul in sight. When we got there, I had a massive nail through one of my tyres. Awesome.

So, this event compounded the fact that the people making decisions under the title of Centre Management were, and remain to be, complete and utter cunts. Their reasoning for not letting us park near our work is because they want to keep the spaces available to "customers", reiterating their lack of mental capacity . Let's take the average full time worker from my store. They work about 11 days of the fortnight with one of these being a 9am-9pm shift every second Thursday. Now do Centre Management think that during their lunch break they drive 30minutes down the road and buy their lunch from the food court of another shopping centre rather than going to the one that is 100metres from their work? Or perhaps they think that after working a 9 or 12 hour day, they drive to this alternative shopping centre to buy their weekly groceries rather than going to the Woolies or Franklins that's also in our centre? Of the full time workers I work directly with, they are all women who are all responsible for preparing the family meal at their homes. Perhaps managment think that they have some live chickens in their backyards that they kill and pluck whenever they feel like whipping up a stir-fry. Likewise with a cow for the Sunday night roast. On the contrary. If someone was given the task of finding a staff member who does not regularly shop at our centre then they'd be meeting out friend Impossibility dressed up in a nice frock of a challenge.

I would love nothing more than for these asswipes to sit down with me and attempt to explain how myself and my colleagues are not customers. I'd cordially invite them to seek out the definition in the dictionary. If the black and white facts didn't convince them, I'd be more than happy to conduct a survey to estimate just how much money we spend in their centre on a weekly basis and then again ask them to explain how we are not worthy of the term 'customers'.

Much like those carpet-bogan-father-and-son ads where the little degenerate keeps saying "Tell them the price son" ...I can imagine you guys thinking  "What's the point, Liss?". It is this: today there was an announcement over the P.A.,
"Would the owners of the cars with the license plates  xxxx, xxxx and xxxx please go immediately to Centre Information located on level 3".

Several hours later my team leader came up to me and said "Did you hear that announcement about the three cars this morning?"

"Yes,"  I replied.

"Do you know what it was all about?"

"No," I replied.

"You know how they chain off the areas we're allowed to park in?"

"Yes," I replied

"Well this morning, some little old lady didn't see the chain and drove straight into it which sent it flying into a cement pillar with her car following. All this cement crashed down onto those three cars that they called out. AMP now have a massive law suit on their hands because the chains aren't clearly visible, they didn't have security re-directing traffic AND there were no signs up warning customers about the chains. Centre Management are in deep shit".

That's right, Centre Management.....you can have a big old suck on karma's pole for all your efforts.