The woman 2 offices over thinks I’m a jerk

Though I live with someone else who works at Google, we tend to drive ourselves. We’re on different schedules, have our own meetings, etc. But today, we carpooled.

I dropped Phil (my apartment mate) off in the garage underneath Building 43 so he could just go up the stairs to his office. I then drove across the (large) garage to my building and parked in a carpool spot near the stairs. I felt ok doing this today because I’d actually carpooled. Then, as soon as I got out of my car, I noticed there were 3 people looking at me. It was pretty awkward because they all stared and no one said anything, and I just stood there for a second and stared back at them.  We all just paused for  a second. And stared at each other. And I know they were all thinking, “What a jerk! He didn’t carpool to work and he parked in the carpool spot!” But I DID carpool to work.

That’s not the best part. It turns out that one of the people who saw me was this woman who works 2 offices down from me. Now this is a woman I have to see 20 times a day and now she thinks I’m a carpool-spot-stealing-jerk, AND since I don’t know her, I can’t go talk to her and explain.

That’s what I get for trying to be good to the environment.

Update: The woman 2 offices down from me saw me reading this blog post after I posted it. In retrospect I should have picked another title…or not written this at work.