The Way of the World: Parking Lots, Honesty and Cheating

Mrs. Denmarkguy and I were downtown the other day, picking up something that have been repaired at a local store. As always, our downtown is a difficult place to park, particularly during the summer because this little city is a tourist destination.

Meanwhile, there was an article in the local newspaper the other day that someone is building a new hotel in the downtown area — not a big one, just 50 rooms — but they're going to only have 11 on site parking spaces.

I'm not sure why anybody thinks that makes sense, except maybe due to their location next to the ferry terminal they are expecting many of their guests to be people who are just overnight visitors coming over on the ferry and not bringing their cars. Who knows?

Regardless, most of our downtown areas are two hour parking, and we have a number of so-called "citizen volunteers" that work for the police and go around and chalk mark people's tires to determine whether or not they have been parking there for any particular period of time. And if you go over time by any significant amount, you can expect to get a parking ticket.

Trust... and Mistrust

This all made me think about the the fact that I can't remember ever seeing so many parking tickets as I have seen since moving to the United States and believe me that was over 40 years ago! Prohibiting stuff, making a law about it, and then punishing people seems to be a way of life in the US of A.

I bring it up, because it made me think about parking in Denmark, where parking is also at a premium in summer communities, as well as in the city of Copenhagen.

The system "over there" is similar in the sense that you have 30 minute parking, two-hour parking and so forth, but you declare your own arrival time by having a little disc in the front window of your car where you set your time on small clock like thing and just leave it in your front window.

Danish parking disc in the front window of a car

I remember mentioning this system to some of my American friends and describing how that works and the common exclamation was "well, don't people cheat on that all the time?"

Which is always brought to mind how subtle cultural differences between nations can be.

"Thinking like a Dane" for a moment, two different responses come up in my head: Number one... why would you want to cheat? What is the mindset that goes behind thinking "oh look, I offered the chance to do something voluntarily, so let me cheat and take advantage of the situation?"

And thought number two — which is more of an observation — is... isn't that an incredibly selfish thing to do? You know perfectly well that if somebody else cheated in the face of you, you'd be mad as hell and yet you are prepared to cheat what's up with that?

Of course, I should hasten to add that these are broad generalizations" and exceptions abound!

But here in the US we often wring our hands in despair at the high level of crime and the way everything seemingly sets out to exploit us, but aren't we setting ourselves up for that by having a mindset that we're more concerned with what is good for ourselves rather than what's good for everybody?

And before you get your shorts in a twist, I'm not saying I have an answer to anything here — and I'm not expecting anyone else to, either — but it's just something that makes you think.

Which brings us back to our new hotel, and what feels like thinking that's primarily centered on saving on property and construction, selling hotel rooms, and to hell with whether or not you're actually making the parking problem WORSE. And to hell with the fact that having a worsening parking problem will discourage the very tourists you built your hotel for...

Oh. Wait. That would require thinking beyond next quarter's profits...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great rest of your week!

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Created at 2023-07-26 22:10 PDT
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