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<\/p>\nValet Culture in Lebanon. <\/p>\n
Where shall I start? With the valet man who tries to rip me off in Mar Mikhael? Or with the fact that I valet my car to an opera singing valet man just to pick up coffee from Dunkin Donuts? Or that I have \u201cvaleted\u201d just to pick up coffee from Starbucks? No, no, I\u2019ll start by telling you guys that I end up paying the valet at my gym half as much as I pay for my actual gym membership per month<\/b>. You\u2019ll tell me to toughen up and find a parking spot, princess but the nearest parking spot is not far from my own house, okay?<\/p>\n
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Whether out of prestige or necessity, many shops in Lebanon have the option to valet. No matter which example I use, the fact remains that I\u2019m pushed to valet my car wherever I go. And along with that, I end up worrying about my car and sometimes even worrying about dealing with the valet staff. Once in a while I get a raw determination to find a parking spot that is a reasonable distance from my destination. Sometimes I get lucky and find one, in which case I immediately<\/i> evacuate my car and casually walk past it like it\u2019s a stranger\u2019s car. I might even give it a dirty look for being parked in a free parking area. Why put on this (Oscar-worthy) act? Because valet personnel are undoubtedly lurking in the dark waiting to chase after me in the dark to ask for my keys and give me a valet ticket stub – because this area belongs to the valet company. They supposedly own the land now. How convenient for them. Most of the time my raw determination gets the best of me, and after pretending I can\u2019t understand Arabic I leave my car there, keep my keys and yell \u201cnope\u201d as I gracefully run away.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the worst part of Lebanon\u2019s obsession with insisting on valet is that you likely won\u2019t find a parking spot within a mile of most of your destination anyway. Park a mile away? Yes some people might, but for the rest we can take into consideration any weather inconvenience or heels or just the simple fact that most Lebanese are consistently late to their destinations and valet will keep them from being another 10 minutes late. <\/p>\n
I want to simplify the issue of essentially needing to pay to go into a store and insist that the store must have it\u2019s own parking spaces reserved for customers. Unfortunately only pharmacies and take-no-crap-from-no-one aging shop owners do this. It\u2019s easy to say that all other shops do this too but we can\u2019t because the layout of streets and shops simply wont allow it. The real problem is in the way of thinking which allowed stores to line the highway, the most dangerous place to stop and look for parking to go to Red Shoe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valet Culture in Lebanon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":411143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_preview_accessed":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"media-embed-type":[],"class_list":["post-49466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"authorship":[49],"yoast_head":"\n