The Slice: Parking here in the wild, wild West

I probably pay as much attention to sent-to-everybody workplace emails as the next guy.

Even if a lot of them seem to address the need to clean out the septic newsroom refrigerator, which I do not use.

But the other morning, an in-house email arrived from a buildings manager that got my attention.

The subject line: “Production facility parking fighting issue.”

Whoa. I decided to hold off on deleting that.

I knew right away this was going to be readable. How could it not be?

After all, the subject line referred to “fighting issue,” not “fighting incident.”

So apparently the production facility’s parking area had been the scene of several recent bouts. How had I not heard about this?

But I could believe it. The parking garage scenario is fraught with combustible flashpoints.

Just think. Door dings, hogging two spaces, being cut off just as you were about to pull into a parking space … the list goes on. But fisticuffs?

I suppose the newspaper employs a broad cross-section of personality types. And I believe there are also some non-Spokesman-Review folks who park over there.

Still, it was hard to imagine people actually getting into punch-outs.

OK, maybe one time somebody committed a parking infraction so egregious that frontier justice seemed like the only was to resolve it. But more than one fight? Enough brawls to constitute a parking garage “issue.”

I tried to imagine it. Were the combatants landing jack-hammer head shots? Were all the fighters guys or were women among those throwing hands over at the parking garage? Were these incident boxing-style exchanges of blows or something more akin to mixed martial arts? Did a hockey referee eventually intercede and hand out five-minute penalties?

The S-R is already doing a book club. Is a fight club next?

Then my admittedly lowbrow curiosity gave way to sadness.

I’ve been here a long time. I have at least a nodding acquaintance with many if not most of those who work here at the Death Star, er, Review Tower. It made me uncomfortable to think of these good people getting so upset that straight rights seemed like the only recourse.

Can’t we all just get along?

Then I leaned a bit closer to my computer screen and saw that I had misread the subject line. The email didn’t say “fighting issue.” It said “lighting issue.”

Oh. OK.

Glad cooler heads prevailed.

Today’s Slice question: What would it take, weather-wise, to keep you from grilling outdoors?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Pluto was discovered on this date in 1930 in Flagstaff, Arizona, by onetime Kansas farm boy Clyde Tombaugh.