Hello,
This must have come up before, but I can’t imagine how to look for it, so please forgive any redundancy.
I live in Los Angeles
Today, I charged my car at a public station near UCLA. Something about the station has always bugged me. It could be as the fact that the charging station is not well lighted. It could be the almost constant crowding there, the fact that the two chargers almost never appear to be free. It could be that I’ve never had the sort of friendly exchange of tips with another EV owner there that I regularly have at other stations.
But today, one of the two stations was free, so I plugged in, posting a note on Plugshare that I’d be back to disconnect in two and a half hours.
Twenty minutes later, some guy unplugged my car so he could plug in his own.
Fiat provides a program that lets me monitor charging remotely, and I saw that my car wasn’t charging. I walked over to the station, and there the guy was, just finishing plugging in his car. He’d disconnected my car and plugged the cable into his own. I think I opened the discussion with “What do you think you’re doing?” Things went downhill very, very vast when it became apparent that he saw no problem with disconnecting my car without asking my permission. In short, I cursed him out.
I was brought up not to touch other people’s possessions without permission. I’ve sometimes seen notes on Plugshare saying “go ahead and unplug me when I’m done charging if you need a charge,” or words to that effect. But when I’ve needed a charge and all the charging stations were occupied, I’ve put notes on windshields asking people to let me know when they’re done so I can have my turn. That just seems the civil and respectful thing to do. Doing what that guy did seems like stealing somebody else’s lunch out of the break room refrigerator. He could have damaged my car. I still don’t know. It’s my understanding that when I lock my car, the charger’s supposed to stay put. I don’t know yet, but the point is, neither did he. Why take a risk with somebody else’s stuff?
I’d appreciate any responses. I was livid. This guy seemed genuinely surprised that I would object.
At this point, I’m not planning to charge there again. I think the whole experience was part and parcel of that whole creepy West LA vibe, where people nearly kill you trying to beat you to a red light in a traffic jam, then sit in the entrance to a parking lot, waiting for the one spot that’s within 10 feet of the store entrance instead of walking across the lot.
Not that I’m inclined to change my point of view too much on this, but I’d like to know whether I’m in the mainstream or an anomaly in thinking this guy was way, way, way out of line.