Don't valet park your car.

This is just a little tip I have for you after talking to a valet I know.

Everything you worry about when people valet your car, yeah, that sometimes happens. I've been forbidden to talk in specifics, but I'll do the best I can about a particular valet at a particular spot downtown and some specifics I've heard about.

This valet works at a very prominent location downtown and routinely valets cars that are worth more than most people make in a year. Nearly every single one of these cars he drifts around the garage when he parks them. The valet level of the parking garage is mostly closed off from the public, so no one other than the other valets and management actually sees what they do. What kind of cars are we talking about? Oh, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, stuff like that. I've heard stories about the races they stage down in the garage -- literal drag races between things like a Ford GT and a Porsche GT2. He'll talk about which cars can reach over 70 mph in the garage, and how close they like to slide the cars near the concrete at the entrance to the garage.

Even worse, they see nothing wrong with what they're doing. They claim that they're driving the cars no harder or rougher than the owners would, and the concrete floor of the garage is sealed and slick, so sliding the car is easier and more predictable to do than you'd think. All of this may be true, but it doesn't excuse the behavior. I drive the red Porsche Cayman S you see in the banner at the top, and I'm pretty generous with letting people drive it. I also race that car, and I can tell you that it's very likely that no one would drive the car as hard as I drive it. Even still, if one of my friends drove the car like this guy says he routinely drives the customer cars, the ride would be over real fast. We wouldn't even be having much of a discussion other than "Stop. Now." If I don't even know you?

Look, it doesn't matter one bit what the valet parker thinks. As the owner of a car that he thinks nothing of trashing, I can tell you that it does personally bother me. I didn't give you license to drive it that way, and while I might drive it harder, I also pay the bills and tires and other consumables. A better argument would be, "how about I fuck your girlfriend? I probably won't fuck her as hard as you would."

Oh, and for those of you who haven't yet signed off of valet parking, management is aware of this behavior and approves of it. No one's been fired for it, and no one's been reprimanded for it either.