Rent-a-cops are Assholes

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “They can’t all be assholes”. But I believe that in making the claim I’ve come relatively close to the truth. Let me tell you why Rent-a-cops are assholes. Rent-a-cops – and to an even greater degree, real cops – are conditioned to treat everyone as a suspect of some wrong doing or other. Also, they are conditioned to believe that they are never wrong. What’s worse, few people seem to care that the police carry out their duties in the manner of assuming we, members of the general public, have done something wrong. Hardly an eyelash is batted when an otherwise law-abiding citizen is pulled over for doing 65 mph in a 60 and is treated as though they just wiped their ass with the U.S. flag, took a piss on the Highway Revenue Collector’s family grave, belong on death row, or all of the above.

Of course, at least, real cops are backed by an authority which helps explain the way in which an asshole attitude can fester and boil. Rent-a-cops, on the other hand, have no real authority. It’s like one of those annoying, untrained Shih-tzus running out of its yard and across the street, barking at you rabidly because you happen to exist. Just makes you want to punt it back into its own yard and go, “Shaaadup!” Same with attitude-laden rent-a-cops

So, here’s the deal. Only a rent-a-cop could present the following joyful news in such a way as to piss me off: facilities will be building more motorcycle parking for us!

As I’m leaving work today, there are tall, narrow semi-permanent road cones where yesterday there was a lane of travel through the parking lot. It looks to me as though they’ll be extending the existing motorcycle parking and I figure it’s a way of indicating that this is now the parking area. The cones are far enough apart and there is no hazard preventing me from safely riding between them at parking lot speeds, so I begin to ride through. Well…what to my wondering eyes does appear, but Mr. Disgruntled, “Today they gave the lone bullet to one of the female rent-a-cops and I’m pissed about it” Asshole Rent-a-cop? He steps directly into my line of travel. So I accelerate, and mow him down. Bwahahahahahaha!! Okay, no. That didn’t really happen, but would’ve been infinitely satisfying, knowing what I know now about our encounter. I slow to a stop and flip up my visor, so he can see that I’m not a threat and that he won’t have to radio to the rent-a-cop who does have the bullet today to “come quick”. He sees that I’m no threat, but insists on reading me the riot act anyway.

“Do you think you’re special? Do you think you can go through here just because you’re smaller than the cars that have to go around?”

“Well, yeah”, thinks I, already knowing that the experience in which I’m about to partake will likely rip me from my happy place. What kind of stupid question is “Do you think you can go through here just because you fit”? That’s precisely why I went through! Did he think I did it because of some licentious attraction to road cones on my part? Did he think I was rendered unable to keep away? And, yeah, I'm also special. I'm better for traffic. I'm better for world peace (I need less gasoline and oil and, therefore, am less apt to create a demand for oil which precipitates war). And I'm better for the environment. Way better, in fact, than the mouth-breathers using their 25 gallons-per-mile macho F350 Superdootie pick-ups as commuter vehicles. Anyway...

He goes on: “If there had been tape between the cones, you wouldn’t have been able to go through”.

Maybe. Or maybe I’d go through anyway and liberate the oppressed yellow crime scene/road construction ribbon from its shackles, allowing it to trail joyously behind me while I pretended to be the winner of the pageant! But no, I probably would’ve gone around. Mr. Obvious must’ve thought it made him look smart to point out that tediously boring fact. It just made him all the more annoying. So?

So I say to him, “What is all this?” waving in the general direction of the cones, which now surround us. (What! You thought I was going to let him stop me before I got into them? Huh-uh. I rode right up to the prick.) He proceeds to lecture me on how it’s an unsafe place to travel and they’ll be making it a permanent crosswalk and extended motorcycle parking area, inaccessible to motorized vehicles, but for the purposes of parking said two-wheeled variants.

As this is happening, a fellow rider is gearing up for his commute home in said soon-to-be-expanded motorcycle parking area and chimes in to the discussion. “So, I suppose you’re going to want me to go alllll the way around, too, huh?” I detect the sting of sarcasm. I’m pretty sure rent-a-cop lacks the requisite synapses firing to put together an understanding of sarcasm. Good for you for getting in a little jab, fellow rider!

“No”, says Stinky McAsshole-rent-a-cop, “we’ve decided to let anyone who parks in this area ride through”.

WTF?? Holy Arbitrary Nonsense, Batman!

Anyway, I feign a look at the rent-a-cop that says, “Wow, more motorcycle parking? This is really great news!” Which it is, even though it won’t directly benefit me because I park in another area. The thing that irritated me wasn’t that they had blocked off the lane where I usually ride (it’s a parking lot, fer Chrissakes, you can ride practically anywhere), but the manner in which the information was presented. So, at this point, I’m just itching to be on my way, because it’s taking everything I’ve got to remain civil and not call this prick a prick right to his face. (No, really! I was seriously thinking about it. Mild-tempered me! I mean, what’s he gonna do? Fill out one of those silly forms they do when you park illegally because there are too many people at the plant, and not enough paces to park? The ones that get sent to HR and then forwarded to your supervisor – now directly to your supervisor because of the cutbacks in HR – that result in…well, nothing? Okay, if you get enough of them, they “make” you take a day off without pay. But I’m getting off track here).

Anyway, not content to leave it be, Asshole Rent-a-cop says, “You got your badge?”

I say, “yeah…in the top case”, and nod my head aft.

He begins to walk away, fighting his asshole instincts, apparently thinking it’d be too much trouble for me to get off the bike, open the trunk, and show him my badge (which it would be, especially in this amazingly non-issue “incident”). But the A-hole Force is strong with this one and he just can’t let it go. He spins back around and says, “Get it out, I need to see it”.

Good thing for full-face helmets, because I wouldn’t want this asshole to have the pleasure of seeing me biting my tongue so hard it should’ve been bleeding. What goddamn difference does it make whether or not I have a badge? I wasn’t inside the gate, I was in the parking lot (admittedly, company property, but quite accessible to the general public, none the less). What if I didn’t have my badge? What if I was just on my way home after arriving and then discovering that I had left it? Or what if I didn’t even work there at all? Would the outcome of our little chat been any different? Anyway…as I retrieve my badge (and asshole rent-a-cop completely abdicates his primary duty to guard the gate from nefarious, would-be intruders, in favor of harassing me), I look at the fellow rider and just shake my head. He gives a bit of a chuckle and a smile as if to say, “Yup, he’s a Grade-A Prick, alright”.

So, I show a-hole my badge without even looking at him. (I know…like it mattered. I had on a full-face helmet – which only serves to further bring home the point of how ridiculous it is of him asking to see my badge in the first place). As I’m putting my badge away, with my back to Mr. Drunk-on-faux-authority, he says to me, “Have a nice weekend”.

What?! He pulls this lame-ass attitude with me and then thinks that “Have a nice weekend” makes the whole confrontation a shining example of his stellar people skills? I don’t think so. Fucking prick. The conversation would’ve gone over so much better if he’d have waved me down and, right from the start, treated me respectfully and just said something along the lines of, “I just wanted to let you know that we’ll be making this area into a permanent pedestrian/motorcycle parking area because the way the aisles all come together here is unsafe. Please start coming down the next aisle over.”

I’d have had no problem with that, and would’ve been happy to comply. “Have a nice day, Officer”, would’ve been my pleasant reply. But no. He had to be a prick and flex what little authoritative muscle he has. Bad, Shih-tzu! Bad!