No Apology, Just a Scratch
Posted April 20th, 2008 @ 06:44pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Coming out of Cracker Barrel today, Carey saw an older, larger woman getting out of the back seat of a car parked next to our VW Touareg. She made a noise like "oh!" as the woman's door came within an inch of hitting our car, then made no noise as the woman pushed the door even further open, putting a nice four-inch scratch in our rear passenger door.
A male companion of the woman, who had been sitting in the front seat, said "oh, it's nothing" and the four people from the car walked in to Cracker Barrel. No apology, no offer to give us $10 to have it buffed out or to buy some touch-up paint, nada.
I was stunned. Carey was stunned. Not a peep from them despite the fairly obvious scratch. This goes above and beyond my "Courtesy and Manners" post. Wow.
Carey left a note on their windshield telling them that they should at least say "sorry."
In the words of that girl from Full House, "how rude!"
P.S. To the anonymous commenter, I have but simply this to say: times change, situations change, and people change.
Donate Life
Posted 03 May 2008 at 7:21am #
That's gotta be fairly expensive to fix - are you not going to charge them for the damage?
Posted 03 May 2008 at 8:45am #
[quote comment="47482"]That's gotta be fairly expensive to fix - are you not going to charge them for the damage?[/quote]
How can we? They left. It certainly wasn't worth a police report - it's just a scratch. You have to know where to look to find it instantly - it's not like they keyed the car or something and really gouged it out.
Posted 03 May 2008 at 9:18am #
If you had enough time to leave a note on their windshield, you had enough time to write down their license plate number. 🙂
If it were me, I would have waited for them to return from the store, so I could get their name and phone number (but mostly because the car I drive doesn't belong to me).
My brother scraped another person's car in a parking lot, and left a note for them with his phone number. They called him, and told him that their car was old enough that they didn't care about the scratch. But ultimately, it was their decision, I suppose.
I dunno - besides the cost of the paint (and finding the exact paint you'll need), it's going to take time to fix the scratch. All because some people in a parking lot couldn't be bothered to treat you in a fair way. That would leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Posted 03 May 2008 at 9:38am #
[quote comment="47485"]If it were me, I would have waited for them to return from the store, so I could get their name and phone number (but mostly because the car I drive doesn't belong to me).[/quote]
Cracker Barrel is a restaurant. We'd have been waiting - with a 5yo - for quite awhile.
And again, they scratched the car but it's not a big scratch. It might be a bit more than you can just buff out, but it's not worth continuing to worry about. So…
Posted 03 May 2008 at 9:44am #
Oh! My mistake, I think I was getting it confused with Trader Joe's.
Ah, well. Such is life.