mr roboto said:
mr roboto, on 29 Jan 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

I left my car running for 10 hours today. I work from home, and I had a meeting at 10:30 so I started my car at about 10 o'clock to get warmed up. I went back in the house to pack my laptop bag and finish getting ready and got a phone call that the meeting was canceled. I immediately got through three other phone calls and got into some other projects completely forgetting about the car.
About 3 PM I had to run out to a different meeting and my wife just gotten back home so her car was nice and warm. I decided to just take her car came home around 530. 8:00 PM, after the kids were put to bed, I told my wife I had to run out to Walmart to get some things and couldn't find my car keys. That's when, after about 10 minutes of searching I realized that I never turn my car off.
Apparently, if you leave a 1999 Honda CRV running for 10 hours it will burn approximately one quarter tank of gas.
I had to pick up my daughter from basketball practice at 6:30 last night. Leaving everything to the last possible moment like always, I ran out the door at about 6:10, needing to go to the ATM, liquor store and dry cleaner and get to the gym in 20 minutes.
I almost never have any cash on me, but I needed to get $100 for my son to take on an out-of-town school trip. While my part of Baltimore is far from shady, I still get a little uncomfortable hitting the ATM at night, so I pulled up as close to the ATM as I could be without actually parking in the handicapped spot right next to it - I was in a little lane that said "No Parking to allow ramp access." Is it right to partially obstruct a handicapped spot? No. Was a handicapped person going to be pulling up in the 35 seconds it took to complete my transaction? Probably not.
So while I'm getting my money, another car pulls up and the guy gets out to go to the ATM next to the one I'm using. I grab my cash, walk by him (kind of a strange looking older dude) and jump into my car because now I only have about 14 minutes for the rest of my errands. The car door felt a little weird as I opened it up, and then felt weird as I pulled it closed - that's funny, I thought. Just then the kind of strange older dude starts talking real loud, something like "You've got my card!" Wow, that guy really is strange, yelling at the ATM.
So I go to grab my keys out of my coat pocket, and that's when I realize the car is already running. And I look up, and the strange guy isn't yelling at the ATM, he's yelling at me: "You're in my car!" Which I was, explaining why the car door felt so weird. He wanted to come over, but I think he was afraid to leave the ATM in mid-transaction, and perhaps also was a little afraid that I was a potentially armed carjacker.
So I got out, said sorry, got in my car and got the hell out of there. There are two valuable lessons I take from this story:
1. If that guy hadn't parked in the handicapped spot, none of this would have ever happened.
2. He shouldn't have left his car running while he used the ATM.