I was thinking, ah, just 30 minutes from now I'll be home and ready to climb into bed.
I went inside and paid for the week's stay. As we approached the car, the attended came up to me.
"Is this yours?"
"Uh. Yeah," I said.
"I have some news about your car." My heart was sank and raced to come up with all the possibilities before he said anything. I'm already tired and cranky from the jet lag (my body thought it was about 1:30am), so "news about your car" were the last words I wanted to hear from someone.
"What," I said. My mind still whirling with a dozen possibilites.
"Well, it was slippery the other night and when the attendent was moving the car, he hit the brakes and slid into another truck."
"WHAT?!" As I walked forward to the front of the car, I was expecting a little ding or smallish dent. I was shocked by what I saw. My poor little WRX (which is due to paid off in just a few months). The whole front was quarter bashed in, buckled and crumpled, the bumper pulled away and the headlight crushed. The signal lamp ripped through the metal. My jaw hit the floor, just behind my heart and stomach. "Mother######!!!""Oh my God!" May said.
"We'll pay for all the damages, of course. We pretty much fired the guy on the spot," the attendant said before I could launch in a barrage of curses.
Needless to say I was UBER PISSED off. My guess is that there's somewhere around $2,000 in damage. I did a bit of paperwork and took off. Luckily the only mechanical damage seems to be a slight tweak in the alignment.
What really bugged me was the amount of damage. It was obvious to me that the person driving the car was going fast. My own guess is somewhere around 30 mph, to do this amount of damage. He certainly wasn't going at a reasonable pace for a parking lot in inclement weather, which makes me suspicious. My guess is they had some young buck moron who got into a hot little car and decided to gun it without paying attention. Of course, if I find out that the car was taken out of the lot and the accident occurred on the road, I'll be talking to lawyers, police and the BBB.
Needless to say, sleeping that night...didn't happen. Between the jet lag and obsessing about all the possible nasty scenarious that might come from this, I'd say I slept a grand total of 30 minutes. Not good since I had to be at work that morning.
I'm taking the car in on Monday morning for an estimate and will reserve a spot for the repairs. The MasterPark manager agreed to pay for a rental as well. So far they've been good; we'll see how it goes when it comes down to paying for the damages.
C'est la vie. I just have to keep telling myself it's just a car.
