My husband was recently recognized for perfect attendance at his place of employment. This is a rare occasion for him because he is a volunteer fire fighter and is sometimes late for work because he is at a fire scene. The state of Indiana has a law that prohibits employers from penalizing volunteer fire fighters for being late when they are at a scene. They may not leave work to go to a call, but they may be late. His employer has never penalized him but he has never qualified for the PERFECT attendance award due to his excused tardiness. This time it just so happened none of the calls he went to required him to be late to work. Yay! So he got a certificate, a small monetary award AND a reserved parking spot. Mind you, he works third shift (roughly 8:00 pm to 6:00 am). There are very few employees that work third shift so getting a good parking spot has never been an issue for him. So, when they asked him where he would like his reserved spot he chose one for our son to use. (We should have seen this was going to be a problem! A father trying to do something nice for his son! Watch out!) Our son also works at the same place but he works the day shift at which time it can be difficult to find a spot to park.
A little back ground on our son, Jimmy. He will be 23 at the end of this week. He is employed full time but it is through a temp agency. (This is confusing to me because he has been there for about a year now. Not sure when a years employment became temporary, but I digress.) He lives on his own and pays his own bills, including automobile and renters insurance. The vehicle he drives is in my husband's name. Jimmy usually gets to work pretty early anyway. (I had a tendency to be late a lot when he was a kid and he now has an aversion to tardiness.)
Well, as I am sure you may have guessed, someone complained. A guy is upset that my son is able to have a reserved spot. I'm guessing because he feels my son doesn't deserve it. My husband earned the spot and we feel he has a right to use it as he wants. A reserved spot isn't beneficial to someone on third shift so if they aren't going to replace the "perk" with something more useful he should be able to use it any way he wants. It is his spot, his son and his vehicle. However, since this guy complained my husband now no longer has a reserved spot, it now becomes a regular parking space. The funny thing is my son will still probably get to park there because he gets there early enough any way.
I guess my point is .... was this something so serious that the guy really needed to complain about it? What does he get out of taking something away from someone else? He isn't the only one that I have seen do this so I wonder what makes people do this? Are they just so unhappy in their own lives that they can't stand to see someone benefit from anything? I guess I should pray for this man. Something has happened or NOT happened in his life to make him this way. I often find it easy to pray for people who have done ME wrong, but I must confess that this is a little harder. My husband just wanted to do something nice for his son. My son has overcome many challenges in his life and deserves a little bit of goodness. I'm very frustrated that someone wants to rain on their parade. I pray for the ability to pray for this man!
Ok... I'm done complaining now. =)
Angie
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