jorgond

Thank you guys all for the nice comments! And yes I did finally get through to them, they decided to answer just as my son closed his eyes! FML!

OP here. A little backstory... The vehicle I was driving is my work vehicle- a professional carpet cleaning van. I had driven the van to a job, realized there were no available parking spots to back it into and was thus forced to park it in the street and blocking two vehicles. I pulled the cleaning hoses and supplies to clean the apartment, finished the job, wrapped up and got back into the van. Only then when I shifted to 'drive' did the problem make itself known. Yes, it is an automatic. Not sure as to what was happening mechanically, I called our company's mechanic and it took him over an hour to get to me with the necessary part- a tiny little pin that pulls the shifter between gears and only takes a few minutes to replace without having to take it to a dealership or repair shop. So, in that hour long wait, an old lady came out to drive her vehicle to a store. As luck would have it, her vehicle was one of two that my van was blocking. She asked me to move the van, to which I replied that I couldn't as it was stuck in park. I explained I couldn't even shift it to neutral to push the vehicle out of the way. I explained I was waiting on someone to come help me. That made her day, and she started screaming at me for several minutes. Logic has failed to defuse the situation and since I am not a Vulcan and cannot sleep hold a bitch, I, treasuring the security of this job to provide for my family, chose to then get back into my van, roll up the window, and said "**** it. Time to FML." She left to go back inside after a few minutes. About 20 minutes later, the mechanic showed up, fixed my van, and I was back up and running to finish the day's work.

OP here -- we told her. We didn't have a choice. She was devastated and will be for some time. She's spent considerable time at farms, so she gets the whole cycle-of-life thing but it's different when there is an emotional connection. There won't be any dogs in the near future. Maybe in the spring we can talk about adopting a rescue dog.