Having sat watching a late night flik, my wife and I punctured the envelope of the mall into the dark, tar-heavy, covered Parking lot.
Before us stood Arthur C Clarke's HAL 9000 reincarnate, a parking paystation.
Intimidating, complex, expressionless, sharp and shiny, its monolithic steel form sits squat and heavy. Mona-Lisa-like, it follows us with its beady LED lights, there is no escaping it for it is the gatekeeper to the light beyond this cavernous hollow.
The monochrome green screen bleats and blinks yanking us within range of its gravitational pull. Moving closer kicking and screaming, fumbling and shaking, I step up to The Death Star patting my body down, searching desperately for the parking Ticket. I find it in my pen pocket sharply bent and mildly creased. I gulp hard and loud as the wad of gob slippy slides rapidly down my gullet plummeting with a deep splash into my sparkling-water-filled belly.
Like a blindfolded kid at a pin-the-donkey party, I begin thrusting, shoving my piece of origami into each of the multitude horizontal slots seeking one, just one opening that'll accept the ticket. Is it the coin Slot, card slot, ticket slot, paper cash slot,credit card slot, scratch block, kep pad, tariff thingy, or the gaping cash back slot?. My brain rotates on my spinal column like Jordan spinning a basketball atop his ET finger.
Meanwhile a dense thick snaking queue of fellow mall rats begins to swell behind me, my head pivots to see this swath of shaking, impatient bobble heads. I am under pressure trying to act Cool Hand Luke playing for time. It's a game of Whack-A-Mole. I want to cry as my hands clam up. And then finally the machine hoover's it up. 'Bingo', I shout.
Success, and after a moment of processing, Robocop indicates the amount, it's a perfect tenner.
Deep inside my ipod pocket, I find a rusty crumpled greenback.
Top slot, bottom slot,side slot, my stomach's in a knot. Again, which darn slot is it?
With my hands now in full flight swishing around like Yehudi Menuhin conducting New York's Philharmonic,I stuff the tenner into the top slot jamming the thing in as I would my forgotten swimming trunks into my carry-on luggage. 'Just. get. in', I growl under my breath. A tear squirts out my eye. I want to die right now. The machine rages, and rejects the green back. I pull it out, iron it with the back of my hand, straightening the corners. I crisp the tenner like I'm licking a rollie, aiming it again for the slot, it takes hold, I yodel 'yes', like I just holed out at Amen Corner at Augusta National.
My armpits drain every iota of hydration from my sapped body. Terminator 2's T-1000 ejects my parking ticket. I cleave to this ticket with hands upon knees. We exit.
Malcolm Gladwell's 10 000 hours does not apply to paying at parking machines, bamboozling me everytime. This User Experience is a game of Russian Roulette, thank goodness i spun the barrel right.
