I pulled up to the pay station at a local automatic
car wash. The pay station did not accept
credit cards, but that was no problem. I
had cash.
I put my 5 dollar bill into the slot and it spit the
bill back out. I continued to feed the 5
dollar bill into the payment slot and the machine continued to reject the
bill. I needed a 5 dollar bill in order
to pay. I did not have singles. I did not have any other 5 dollar bills. And the machine did not accept 20 dollar
bills.
I tried to feed the bill into the payment slot at
least a dozen times and then I realized it was futile. The machine was simply not going to accept
this bill.
But now what do I do?
To access this particular car wash requires some
maneuvering into a narrow space that involves a very tight left turn and the
aligning of the car tires with rails and a track system that ultimately pulls
the car through the wash. My car was already
in this tight place with the wheels on the tracks.
Would I be able to back it out of this place?
Another option would be to drive forward through the
car wash on the track system even though
That didn’t seem like a good idea to me.
The only other option was to jump out of my car and
leave it there, unattended, at the pay station, then run across the parking lot
into the gas station building and pay for the car wash with the gas station
clerk.
I chose to jump out of the car and run to the gas
station building. I paid the clerk who
was smiling at me as if she knew I was having trouble and yet found the whole
situation amusing. I ran back to the car
and keyed the code that was given to me into the pay station. Then the car went through the wash and came
out beautifully.
On the way home in my shiny clean car, some mucky
sludge came off of a garbage truck as it passed me. Less than 2 minutes after my less than
optimal car wash experience the car was dirty again.
There are some days when life likes to remind us
that we don’t really have ultimate control of anything.
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