A Moment Last Saturday

Last weekend I drove to a “Trendy-and-Affluent-City-by-the-Sea” (I’m not going to name names here). I had not been there for a while, and I wanted to shop at its farmers' market as well as visit a culinary store and the only big bookstore left in the area. As I pulled up to the entrance of one of the municipal parking structures, I saw a big sign that said “No Cashier. Take your Ticket and Pay at the Pay Machine before Returning to Your Car.”

One of my little quirks is that I hate when parking a car becomes complicated. I don’t like parking structures and particularly those wretched parking payment machines. I have had trouble with them in the past and being that each structures' machines are slightly different, my having to use one of them would have put more of a learning curve on my morning’s outing than I cared to deal with. So I drove on and found a metered parking spot on the street. It was just easier.

After feeding a few quarters into the meter, I started thinking about this new parking situation as I walked towards the farmers' market. So what happened to all the cashiers that used to work in this and the other city structures? Were they assisted in finding new jobs when they were replaced by these machines? Or were they just added to the already overflowing pool of unemployed labor? Did the Trendy City’s management even think of them at all before they laid them off? And where is the money going that is saved by not having to pay cashiers? Did the parking rates go down? I don’t think so.

I walked through the farmers' market and browsed its expensive eco-farmed produce and artisan crafted gourmet foods. I found myself less interested in buying than I had been when when I first arrived. Who can afford any of this? Certainly not the numbers of homeless folks I saw squatting on the edge of the market grounds and rattling their begging cups at the other market patrons. I have nothing against the food producers making a living and people enjoying locally grown and sustainable foods. After all, that’s why I made the trek. This time, though, I could see a drama of the haves and have-nots being played out over the brussels sprouts and pomegranates -- something I had seen many times before but had never really noticed.

As I wandered around, I stopped in a parking structure to study the instructions on one of the new pay machines. I wanted to figure out how it worked and how much it cost for the next time I visited. The machine was fairly straight forward to use, but one thing struck me: there was no place to make a payment with cash. It only took cards.

I do have plastic, but I don’t like to use cards any more than necessary. Using cash and not using plastic (even a debit card) is my way of living within my means. When my weekly allowance of paper and coins runs out, then I stop spending.

Then another thought occurred to me: those folks of even lesser means who do not have the luxury of credit lines or even checking accounts -- how do they come here and pay?

Then I glanced at the high-end luxury car parked near the pay machine. Ah. They don’t.

The awareness that had germinated a few minutes earlier at the farmers' market suddenly bloomed into a full epiphanal moment: I did not belong there, either physically and morally. I cannot, in good conscience, be a part of a world that flaunts the MORE and bars access to it at the expense of the world that must endure the LESS.

So I walked back to my fifteen-year-old rattle-trap car and high-tailed it back to the neighborhood where I grew up, a blue-collar enclave on the edge of the Trendy City. I drove to a small neighborhood grocery market just two blocks from the Projects to buy my vegetables. At the market the parking is free and uncomplicated and transactions can still be made with cash.

And I even spoke to a real-live cashier.

ljgloyd (c) 2011