It has been my long-held belief that everyone in North America should work at least one minimum wage job in their life, for a minimum of six months. Not just to understand how impossible it is to live on minimum wage, but also to understand how we treat people who provide us with necessary services, which we generally view as demeaning, and therefore view those who provide us with that service as beneath us. The Parking Lot Movie examines the space and people of the Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville, Virginia, a small college town. The owner of the lot has over the years managed to assemble a crew of parking lot attendants consisting of anthropology students, philosophy students, musicians, and others who in looking for a part-time job find a strange understanding of life and human nature through their seemingly mundane job. Director Meghan Eckman films the employees as they sit in their hutch and observe life, cars, and some of the rudest and most disrespectful customers I’ve ever seen. They make very astute points about car culture, and how people feel entitled not only to park for free just because they own a car (and this parking lot is not expensive,) but also behave like jerks from the protection of their car. And it seems the more expensive the car, the cheaper the owner is about parking. Somehow, the attendants manage to keep smiling and laugh off these occasional bouts of ill manners.
