Fourteen months of data. Color-coded by confidence level. He insists this is simply reasonable planning, not, as his girlfriend suggested, ‘a genuinely concerning amount of energy spent on a parking garage.’
LOS ANGELES – A regular visitor to a popular shopping center’s parking structure reportedly maintains a detailed, personal spreadsheet tracking historical spot availability by level, day of week, and specific hour, a fourteen-month dataset he says he built entirely voluntarily and consults religiously before every single visit, a level of preparation his girlfriend describes as “genuinely concerning” but that he defends as “simply reasonable, data-driven planning.”
“Level three is consistently the best bet on weekday mornings before ten,” said the spreadsheet’s creator, identified only as Doug, pulling up the color-coded document on his phone with visible pride. “Weekends after noon, you want level five, or honestly just give up and valet. I have fourteen months of direct observational data supporting every single one of these recommendations. This is not guesswork. This is a genuinely rigorous personal research project.”
Doug’s girlfriend, reached for an outside perspective, offered a considerably more skeptical assessment of the entire endeavor. “He updates it after every single visit,” she said. “He has categories. There is a confidence level column. I love him, genuinely, but I do not think most people need this much certainty about a parking garage, and I have told him as much, repeatedly, without much success in actually changing his behavior.”
Doug defends the spreadsheet’s practical value, noting it has saved him, by his own careful estimate, “dozens of collective hours” of aimless circling in search of an open spot, time he says he has redirected toward “actually enjoying my shopping trips rather than arriving already stressed and frustrated from ten minutes of fruitless searching.” He has reportedly offered to share the spreadsheet with friends on multiple occasions, an offer exactly one friend has accepted.
That friend, reached separately, confirmed the data has proven “genuinely useful, more than I expected going in,” admitting he was initially skeptical but has since successfully avoided several parking headaches by following Doug’s recommendations directly, a track record that has reportedly earned Doug a small but genuine following among a handful of similarly data-curious acquaintances.
Doug says he has no plans to stop updating the spreadsheet, and has, in fact, recently begun tracking a secondary metric involving elevator wait times by level, a project he describes as “the natural next phase of this research” and that his girlfriend describes, once again, as “genuinely more than anyone reasonably needs to know about a parking structure, but I suppose I have made my peace with it at this point.”
Doug’s friend, the sole other convert to the spreadsheet system, has reportedly begun contributing his own observed data points, turning what began as a solo project into what Doug now describes, with genuine enthusiasm, as “a small but genuinely rigorous two-person research collaboration,” a framing his girlfriend has pointed out somewhat undermines his earlier insistence that the whole thing was simply “reasonable, ordinary planning” rather than an actual hobby.
Doug, informed of this specific contradiction, considered it for a long moment before conceding, for what he says is the first time, that “perhaps this has become something slightly more than reasonable planning,” though he maintains, immediately afterward, that the data “remains genuinely useful regardless of what we ultimately choose to call it.”
His girlfriend, informed of this rare moment of concession, expressed cautious optimism that it might represent genuine progress, though she noted, with a knowing smile, that Doug had already pulled his phone back out to update the spreadsheet before she had even finished the thought.
The spreadsheet, as of this reporter’s final check, now spans fourteen months, several dozen tracked variables, and a genuinely growing, if still modest, following of similarly inclined fellow shoppers, a small but real testament to the fact that, however his girlfriend chooses to describe it, Doug’s parking garage project shows no meaningful signs of slowing down.
Doug, asked for one final thought before this reporter departed, offered a genuinely earnest closing statement. “Some people collect stamps,” he said. “I collect parking data. I do not think either hobby needs to justify itself beyond the simple fact that it brings a person genuine satisfaction, and this one genuinely does, for me.”
His girlfriend, listening nearby, rolled her eyes with visible affection, confirming, as this reporter departed, that she has, despite everything, started quietly checking the spreadsheet herself before their own weekend shopping trips, a small concession she was reluctant to fully admit but ultimately, honestly, could not deny.
“Do not tell him I said that,” she added quickly, glancing toward Doug, who was, at that exact moment, already several feet away, phone out, adding a fresh data point from that morning’s own parking experience to row four hundred and something of a spreadsheet that shows no sign of ever actually being finished.
This reporter left the two of them there, in the parking structure’s modest, fluorescent-lit lobby, one quietly proud of a project that has clearly outgrown its own original modest justification, the other quietly, if reluctantly, along for the ride.
For related commentary on ordinary inconvenience inspiring genuinely extraordinary, unnecessary rigor, see Satire Website and News Satire Sites, plus further reading at Satirical News.
Additional coverage at What Is Satire?. More satire at Reductress.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/