As of about two months ago, I am no longer jobless. I have joined the ranks of those socially accepted individuals that work. That can say "I have a job, I work at so and so doing this and that." and people will not think you weird or stupid or dumb or inept or awkward or disturbing, because you have a job, you fit.
My job is okay. It's not something I want to spend the rest of my life on (far from it) but it's paying the bills and I get to watch whatever I want while working. (Because unfortunately, the work is so easy it's hardly challenging.)
Anyway. What with the new job, I now cycle to the train station every day, park my bike there, and take the train to my final destination: work. When I started I immediately went and bought an expensive lock for my bike, because the train station is a hot spot for bicycle thieves. Sneaky bastards. I've already experienced the horror of arriving at the bike park and finding my bike missing, and it wasn't pretty. Thankfully my bike wasn't stolen, it had just been impounded because apparently it was obstructing traffic. Insert eyeroll. So it may have been standing over the line to the bicycle path a teensy weensy bit, but certainly nothing to warrant such drastic actions.
I'll have you know, I was furious at first. But since I had to wait a couple of days to pick it up, by the time I did my anger had cooled significantly and I wasn't even upset that I had to pay 15 euros to get back my own bike, I was just so relieved it hadn't been stolen.
Since then I've been paying closer attention to where I park my bike. I've found a particular spot I like where it's basically impossible to get in the way of traffic, and since I arrive at such ungodly hours in the morning there's pretty much always a spot.
However, since so many bicycles seem to sqeeze in after I've left, I often return in the evening to find my bike surrounded my so many other bikes that it's ridiculously hard to get it out. In such moments I usually feel an indecent amount of rage at the other bikes. My rational self often tries to tell me that all these people needed space for their bicycles too, and they were probably in a hurry, and also had jobs to get to, and they certainly didn't intentionally set their bikes in such a position as to piss me off. The enraged side will have none of this, though, so I often find myself ruthlessly freeing my bike from it's imprisonment, yet the moment I'm on my way home the rage dissipates.
Not so last Monday, as I returned to my bike to find this:
Note that the green bike is mine, and the black lock is not. Needless to say I was in a state. There was no way I was leaving my bike there or standing around waiting godknowshowlong for the owner of the black lock to show up. So I did the only option available: I picked up the entire neighboring bike like it was nothing (just kidding, it was heavy as fuck) and dumped it unceremoniously on the bicycles to the left. All those bicycles fell over as I just plopped the offending bike on top of them, but I wasn't feeling an ounce of remorse, because fuck you.
I then proceeded to casually unlock my own bike and discretely departed the scene.
