By Tarlachia - 15/08/2015 17:42 - United States - Apopka
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Tarlachia tells us more.
OP here. A little backstory... The vehicle I was driving is my work vehicle- a professional carpet cleaning van. I had driven the van to a job, realized there were no available parking spots to back it into and was thus forced to park it in the street and blocking two vehicles. I pulled the cleaning hoses and supplies to clean the apartment, finished the job, wrapped up and got back into the van. Only then when I shifted to 'drive' did the problem make itself known. Yes, it is an automatic. Not sure as to what was happening mechanically, I called our company's mechanic and it took him over an hour to get to me with the necessary part- a tiny little pin that pulls the shifter between gears and only takes a few minutes to replace without having to take it to a dealership or repair shop. So, in that hour long wait, an old lady came out to drive her vehicle to a store. As luck would have it, her vehicle was one of two that my van was blocking. She asked me to move the van, to which I replied that I couldn't as it was stuck in park. I explained I couldn't even shift it to neutral to push the vehicle out of the way. I explained I was waiting on someone to come help me. That made her day, and she started screaming at me for several minutes. Logic has failed to defuse the situation and since I am not a Vulcan and cannot sleep hold a bitch, I, treasuring the security of this job to provide for my family, chose to then get back into my van, roll up the window, and said "**** it. Time to FML." She left to go back inside after a few minutes. About 20 minutes later, the mechanic showed up, fixed my van, and I was back up and running to finish the day's work.
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A lot of you don't seem to understand that I didn't park that way to be an asshole. I did it because it was the only option for me in order for me to do my job. A job that took me 20 minutes originally. The closest parking spot was at least 500' away and it wouldn't have worked with only 300' hoses. Normally had someone come to me and said they had to go, I would've moved immediately. But, this was a mechanical situation I had never encountered, much less even knew about, and I only possess a moderate supply of mechanical know- how. So I did what I thought was best: call our company's mechanic. He asked me if I had zip-ties. I said no. So, he said he'd be by with the necessary part to repair the van. I'm not normally an asshole, but push me enough and I'll be the biggest asshole you've ever seen. Most people are like that too. That day, I chose to employ separation of myself from the raging lady for the sake of keeping my job.
Honestly, you sound like the kind of dude who'd park in a handicapped spot in order to be in range, granted with the full intentions of moving the truck if someone with a sticker showed up. You just caught a shitty break on this one.
Op I understand what you are saying. You did not do it intentionally to hurt anyone. I'm very certain that if you knew the van was going to break down, you would not have parked there. The thing they don't understand is that you had to park where you did to be able to do your job. You really had no choice. That being said, it is upsetting that happened because people do need to get places and it truly could have been an emergency for the lady. However, I'm glad she only needed to go grocery shopping and not somewhere like a Dr. appt. or to pick up a child. It still sucks, but it would have been nice if she could have understood you did not do it on purpose. There needs to be some kind of system or something that ensures that you have a parking spot near the place you need to do the work. I'm not sure how that would be done, but it would improve situations dramatically for everyone involved. Sorry, you had the bad luck that you did today. Hope it doesn't happe. anymore.
you could just pop the hood and manually shift the transmission by moving the knob that the linkage attaches to
To all the people who keep saying "you should've just manually shifted from under the hood" or "adjust the linkage". I hope you realize not many people know how to do this. We do not know how knowledgable OP is when it comes to vehicles. OP, I'm sorry this happened to you.
There's a panel under the shifter column that pops off, flip the switch underneath and you can manually shift into neutral
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I'd be pissed too if someone illegally parked me in and then broke down.
If this has just started happening, as in whilst in the car then that's just really bad luck, but if you've been driving around with it like this for some time then you deserve it because it sounds like the car shouldn't be on the road.