A week after the last one, almost the exact same scene played out. Same movie production. Same security company. Different guard.
I pulled up toward the dog park lot and he stepped out before I'd even slowed down.
I live in this town. I'm at this dog park most days, sometimes twice — I know that lot better than a guard working a single shift there ever will.
"You can't drive up there. There's no parking."
I told him I was pretty sure there was — I'd been coming here for a while, I knew the layout, and I was going to drive up and check for myself.
"You're not allowed to park there. If you drive up, I'll call the park ranger."
"Go ahead," I said. "I know there's a designated parking area up there with space in it."
I looked at him. He didn't call anyone. He walked up the hill himself to check.
There were open spots. He didn't say anything. He just turned around and left.
The manager conversation
I let my dogs do their usual thing at the park, and on my way out I found the manager and told him exactly what had happened.
He defended the guard. We went back and forth for almost fifteen minutes.
I understand why he did that. I ran a business for ten years — I know what it's like to back your own people, even when you privately suspect they got it wrong. That instinct isn't malicious. It's just what running a team does to you. But understanding the instinct isn't the same as agreeing the guard was right, and he wasn't. There was space. He hadn't checked. He said "no" first and looked second.
Why this keeps happening
Here's what I think is actually going on, and it's not unique to this company or this guard.
Saying "no" costs nothing in the moment. Checking first costs a few seconds and a small risk of being wrong in a way that feels, to the person on the ground, more exposed. So the incentive — quietly, informally, never written down anywhere — tilts toward blocking first and confirming never, because a guard who wrongly says "no" rarely hears about it, while a guard who wrongly says "yes" might actually get a call from someone upset.
The problem is that math is wrong. It just moves the cost somewhere else. Instead of five seconds checking a lot, you get a threat, an escalation, a walk up the hill to check anyway, and — this time — a fifteen-minute conversation with a manager that didn't need to happen. Scare tactics aren't actually less work. They just move the work to later and hand it to someone else.
What this should have looked like
It's not complicated. It could have been this short:
"Let me check — yes, there's a spot open right now, go ahead. Once you're parked, you're set for today. Just know that if you come back another time and it's full, you'll need to park elsewhere and walk up."
No threat. No phone call. No fifteen minutes defending a decision that was never checked in the first place. Just — look, then answer.
The actual point
This is the same lesson as the last post, wearing a different hat. A parking rule isn't a law carved in stone — it's a live, changing condition. There either is a spot or there isn't, and that changes hour to hour. Treating a changing condition like a fixed rule is exactly where all of this friction starts. "There's no parking" isn't a fact you inherit once and repeat all day. It's a thing you check, right now, before you say it to someone.
It happened twice, a week apart, same company. That's not bad luck. That's a pattern — which, if anything, makes it more worth writing down, not less.
Mahalo for reading.