Two days a week I pick up Riley after his half day of kindergarten. At the beginning of the year, they sent home (oh yeah, there’s another whole fiasco - remind me to tell you about school bureaucracy later) a sheet on the procedure for picking up kids after the morning kindergarten session. It was very specific.
You could tell from the letter that the school’s primary concern was safety. They didn’t want any kids getting run over. It was obvious from the way that the letter was worded that parents frequently found ways to get around the rules, and the school had to spell out specific things just to make sure those incidents weren’t repeated.
The main problem seemed to be this: There is a driveway, in kind of an oval shape, that parents drive up through to pick up the kids. You park near the curb and hold up the sign for your kid. The teacher on duty sees the kid’s name on the sign and sends him out to the car. You load up the kid in the car and only upon all cars having moved away in front of you you may continue around the drive and exit the school grounds. Basically, you may not pass the car in front of you, for the safety of the kids. For the most part, this works. But there is a problem.
There are a few parents who load their kids, drive around to the other side of the oval, and park. I don’t know why they do this, but they then get out of their cars, fiddle around with their kid in the back seat, and then move on. This process takes probably less than 5 minutes, but the whole process of picking up kids form the school only takes 10, so this is a substantial portion of the pickup process. Note that they’re specifically causing the parents behind them to break the no passing rule, either that or they hold up the whole process when a parent follows the rules.
To compound the insanity, just outside the exit to the oval, there’s a parking lot. It’s easily entered, 20 seconds drive from where they usually stop, and just as easily exited. It would cause them no inconvenience to pull into the lot instead of causing confusion and traffic issues by stopping inside the pickup driveway.
But that’s just the setting. Let me tell you what makes all of this more interesting to me. The cars that do it are always, always, always $60k+ luxury vehicles.
Granted, we live in a nice area, and there are a lot of people around with a lot of money. And I’m not driving a used beater, but I’m not driving a car that has TVs in the back of every seat with separate heat controls and a personal masseuse in the trunk. There are a handful of the standard minivans and family cars, but it’s always the luxury cars, the Cadillac SUVs, that feel the need to ignore the rules. And this has me wondering the fundamental question of this post: Does having money lead you to ignore the rules, or does ignoring the rules lead you to money?
There is a good deal of evidence both ways. I’m not really advocating getting money illegally, but look at the extreme examples. Do you think the Enron guys weren’t rich at some point? And that is probably the wild “took it too far and got nailed” edge case. Think of all of the people who must be just skirting the rules and raking in the money.
Probably a better example is people who turn the rules sideways. It’s not that they’re breaking a rule, not even that a rule hasn’t been written, just that they’ve discovered a place outside of the box that everyone else thinks in, and they result in profit. I’m sure you can think of a handful of examples of companies that started out with a crazy idea - outside the rules - and ended up quite rich as a result.
But on the other hand… I also get the impression from meeting some of these people that privilege makes them better. Completely opposite to the people who come up with a good idea and work it, these folks have money for one reason or another (no doubt there is plenty of old money spread around in this area) and just expect a certain amount of extra consideration. They have money, they have the fancy car, they have things, and so they’re entitled - for no reason that’s apparent to the rest of us - to park someplace and cause that, albeit minor, amount of consternation in everyone else just… because.
It’s even funny talking to those folks. When they do those things, there’s no remorse or apology. “Yeah, I did park there, and did you see my son’s drawing from art class today? Nothing like what he did in his private lesson last week.”
The answer to the question seems vital. After all, if simply ignoring a few key rules, or at least bending them a bit, leads to more cash, leads to my not caring whether I disrupt the flow of drivers behind me, then apparently my following of the rules really isn’t getting me anywhere! I should just skip the rules I don’t like and take what I want, right? Works for them.
There’s a movie - I think it’s either Diggstown or Roadhouse - where the antagonist drives this antique car, and has no mind for what side of the road he’s on. He’s so rich that he doesn’t care. He feels like he’s above the law, without need to care for the rules in society. It’s a good scene to illustrate what I think of every time I see these parents showing their kids how to ignore the rules by parking in that spot.
I’m inclined to put up some traffic cones on the sidewalk with signs, “Do not park here. Park in the lot.” Just to see how many people outright ignore them. But every time, without fail, there’s some parent that parks in that spot.
