Public Service Announcement

Have you ever been trying to park your vehicle in one of the campus parking lots, and somehow had a space you rightfully deserved stolen by someone who was ignorant of our wordlessly evolved protocol? Have you ever wondered exactly what the rules are? Here are some helpful tips:

• When you arrive at a fully-occupied lot, protocol dictates that you select one row in which to wait, one with at least one unoccupied entrance. If no such row exists, the parking lot can be effectively considered closed. Find another lot, or just continue floating around this one like a transient. Your choice.
• If vehicles are already parked at the end of both rows, there is no acceptable reason to enter it. No reconnaissance missions, either; even if the drivers of both vehicles had somehow both neglected an open spot, you are certainly not entitled to it.
• Once you have settled in the right lane at the entrance of one row, you are queued in that row. If there was already another vehicle waiting at the opposite end, you are queued second, and if not, you are queued first and are thereby entitled to the first space that becomes available in that row.
• If you leave the row after having been queued to pursue a newly-opened space in a different row, you forfeit your place in the queue.
• One's temporary proximity to a given space has no bearing on entitlement, and if, for instance, you are queued second in a row and a space five feet in front of you becomes available, it is your obligation to allow the other vehicle to park. Furthermore, if that vehicle is not signaling or otherwise indicating its intention to park—which should always be done in such situations to avoid unnecessary confusion—it is also your obligation to extend your hand out the window and invite them to park. If they then respond to this gesture by inviting you to park, then they have acknowledged the protocol and are for whatever reason giving you precedence, anyway—in this case, the space is yours.
• Friends don't let friends cut in the queue; the fact that the person leaving happened to be that guy whose stoichiometric equations you always ripped off freshman year endows neither of you the right to make some kind of transaction that transgresses the protocol. A sufficiently angry and observant person will forget neither of your license plate numbers.
• Obviously, during full-occupancy, even if one is temporarily granted through some double coincidence of luck the ability to “pull through,” this maneuver is strictly forbidden.
• No one is entitled to park and wait for spaces that lie off of the main thoroughfares of the lot; these spots are wild cards. If one should happen to open up during a period of full-occupancy, the vehicles that at the time happen to be traveling on said thoroughfare—not vehicles already waiting in a nearby lane—have first rights to it. Otherwise, the lots would frequently be subject to all kinds of ill-advised Dukes-of-Hazzard-style maneuvers.
• If someone elects not to follow these procedures, do not just overreact. If one space has opened, another is likely to follow. This also gives you an opportunity to pen an especially eloquent missive reminding them of their civic obligations that you can then place on their windshield. Be sure to write legibly.
  

This has been a public service announcement, made possible in part by a special grant from some douchebag in a dilapidated blue pickup, last Friday morning.