When I was young, I used to drink and make prank phone calls for entertainment. One of my favorite bits entailed me calling retail establishments and asking the manager to please go out and measure the width of their parking spaces for me. Id explain that I very much wanted to do business with them, but that I had to be confident that their parking lot met my requirements. If they asked, Id explain to them that I either had a car that I didn’t want to have touched by other cars, or that I was quite large and needed some extra room to maneuver myself in and out of my vehicle. I’d usually say something like, I was driving by there this afternoon, scouting the place out, and it seemed to me as though the spaces in front of your store were a bit more snug than is the norm.
Well, here it is a decade later and corporate America is finally getting the message. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one complaining. Take a look at this shot I just took at Cracker Barrel. They’ve added a love seat’s-worth of ass room between vehicles.
It makes me wonder how many fat people had to be extracted after getting stuck between vehicles before this policy change was enacted. Id like to know who the Rosa Parks of the obese was who brought about this change. Surely there was one large person in sweatpants who decided to make a stand. I can picture him now, proudly wedging himself between two vehicles to the point where the jaws-of-life had to be employed.
Given the ever-growing size of Americans, my prediction is that within ten years there are tiny moving sidewalks that will run alongside every parking space. Either that, or Cracker Barrel will run a shuttle service to and from the cars of their patrons. And it will be Cracker Barrel leading the way with these innovations. They are at the forefront of this wide-body movement.
… Great…. Now, Im too depressed to write about all that I ate in New Orleans. Itll have to wait until tomorrow.