I start my workday the same way every time. I clock in, grab a coffee and lay out whichever newspaper or GQ magazine is going to hold me over at the end of the night. Parking cars is strenuous work, so you have to build your routine before you can stand around and pick your nose for eight hours.
Honestly, the best part of valet is the constant brain-rotting conversations that fill out the day. I valet at a high-profile location in the heart of downtown Denver’s busiest intersection. I’d say it’s more of a cultural intersection because high-steppers have to make the occasional interaction with night walkers and working-class citizens.
This job has trained me more so in people-watching than driving the actual cars. One Saturday, I grabbed my coffee and sat at the stand for a 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift with my coworker. Just as I lean on the valet stand, a Bentley Bentayga pulls into the lane.
It had a pearly, white satin wrap and a red interior that was visible through the tint of the windows. I approached the driver and the window rolled down to reveal a salt-and-pepper silver fox.
The Bentayga driver was wearing some slick attire that seemed to match the luxury of the car. From a glance, he could have been anywhere from 55 to 65 years old. He was accompanied by what looked like a young Sofia Vergara on the right-hand side of the vehicle.
They left the keys and my coworker and I scanned the situation from top to bottom. Just then he says, “[That’s] what money will buy you.”
I pushed back with a hypothetical: “What if he’s got a wife at home while he’s taking this bombshell out for $50 charcuterie boards all night?”
“A man with that much money would have the option,” my coworker replies. He was a little overconfident in his statement, so it was my duty to question him.
“What?” I probe. “How much attention does one man need?”
My coworker responds, “It’s not so much needing it as it is being able to get it.” He had a point so I had to let him speak his piece for a moment.
“Have you ever been cheated on?” I ask.
“Bro, yes, it was actually so traumatic,” he says as he prepares to enter into the lore of his life again. “I had been dating this girl for a while, so we had the title and everything. We were out late in downtown one night, and this guy sneaks up on us. He pulls a gun on us and his buddy comes around our backs. So we have two guns pulled on us at this point.”
My coworker shared that he quickly emptied his pockets in an attempt to resolve the situation. However, when he went to grab everything from his girlfriend, she held her iPhone back.
“She doesn’t want to give it up so I snatched it from her and gave it to the guy,” he recalls. “Obviously we’re both scared out of our minds and I figure she would be processing what just happened, but she was crying—crying just a little bit too hard over a debit card and an iPhone 11.”
My coworker explained that his girlfriend was mad—at him. I am naturally antagonistic, so I was looking for a way to disagree with him, but I was also sympathetic.
“A week had gone by and she was acting frosty towards me like I was the one that pulled a gun on her,” he said. “I told her, ‘That phone was not worth our lives. You’re bent over something that can easily be replaced.’ She responds by saying, ‘But it wasn’t replaceable.’ Long story short, she was cheating on me. And his ID was in her phone case.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa; it gets worse,” he said in response to my expression of shock. “The guy who she was cheating on me with had died in a car accident a week before we got robbed. One of the last things she had to remember him by was that ID picture in the back of her phone case. Was I mad? Yes! Could I express that anger? NO! You know why? Because she was mourning the man that she was actively having an affair with!”
Shocked, all I can think to say is, “That’s crazy!”
“I know.”
“So I’m guessing that y’all br—”
“Yeah, man, we broke up.”
“That’s crazy!”
“The satin wrap on the Bentayga is fire though.”
“I know!”
I was honestly shocked that he kept his composure while getting a two-for-one special on traumatic experiences.
My habit is to take the moral high ground regardless of the circumstances, but my own personal feelings told me that I would have handled it incorrectly. I have ended relationships for less (for instance, I can’t stand dirty, white Air Force Ones).
A word of advice that my coworker left me with was, “You know, I couldn’t do anything to change that, so why try?”
