Last night, as Snackpants and I were driving from our home in Middle Georgia back to Orlando, we made a slight detour in Gainesville to partake of one of my favorite chains: Tijuana Flats. Because the closest one to us is in Jacksonville, every time we come back to Orlando I insist that we have it at least once. Due to time constraints and pre-existing plans for this trip, Gainesville was really our only option.

The TomTom faithfully got us to the UF Plaza where the Tijuana’s is located, and we proceeded to park my car in the lot before enjoying some of the tasty goodness. We were in there for about 30 minutes and upon returning to the parking lot, Snackpants says…

“Where’s the car?”

It took a few minutes for my anxiety to fully kick into gear. I stared up and down the row, knowing full well that the car had been there and now there was a different, not-my vehicle parked in its place. I admit that I even did a ‘faculties’ check in my mind to see if I had gone insane.

Now, instead of being a rational human being, my mind automatically went to the worst possible scenario: someone stole my car. It took about 30 seconds for me to begin bawling on the sidewalk and mentally running through the list of everything we had just lost: 3 laptops, 2 iPods, my digital camera, my knitting. I ran the mental circle of “well, we have to report it stolen, but the VIN number is on the car and the registration is IN the car along with the insurance information, which I could also access online but my computer is gone” and all that jazz.

Snackpants managed to keep mostly calm, while he did a pretty poor job of keeping ME calm or being soothing in any fashion (sorry honey, but it’s true!). Fortunately, though, he was still in the right frame of mind to realize that we were surrounded by 22 signs signs stating “TOW AWAY ZONE” and he had misread the list of businesses for which the parking lot was used.

Luckily for us, but rather unfortunately for the owner of the car being towed next, the tow truck pulled up about 3 minutes into my hysterical crying and Snacky was able to verify that he had, in fact, taken my car not 20 minutes earlier, which was about 5 minutes after we parked it. Turns out the plaza pays a guy to sit and watch people violate the parking rules and then calls in their vehicles to be taken away.

From what we learned on the ride to the tow yard, towing is a HUGE business in Gainesville. There are about 12 companies that run around the clock picking up cars, which apparently have NOWHERE to park in that city that is actually legal. And far be it from anyone in the plaza to let us know that we were being retarded and failing to read the signs. Oh no. They couldn’t even be bothered to say “It was towed” while I was standing there losing my mind along with my tears.

Next trip, we are stopping in Ocala instead for some Flats.

  • Share/Bookmark