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>> Valet parking is downright dangerous. My wife's car had its clutch literally melted by an incompetent valet driver, and the car was barely driveable when we

>> Valet parking is downright dangerous. My wife's car had its clutch literally melted by an incompetent valet driver, and the car was barely driveable when we got it back. As someone who will only ever own manual transmissions, that's terrifying. Over the years I've had a handful of occasions where "mandatory valet" has been presented to me. I always refuse. Most of the time, I've been allowed to park my own car and bring my keys with me. If they refuse to allow me to do so, I find my own parking elsewhere. Only once have I had to actually abandon an event due to my stubbornness to hand my car over to a stranger working minimum wage.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
To be fair, most of those "strangers working minimum wage" have been doing the job a while, and are more experienced with driving all kinds of vehicles than you or I would ever be. I worked A/V in a hotel for years, and being a car nut, I hung with the valets during breaks to chat cars, and a lot of those guys are in the job because they love cars and want to drive as many different ones as they can. Yes there's always the chance of a valet who hasn't got a clue, but there's a chance of that in any job you've ever had contact with. We're just very attached to our cars (rightly so, mine is my prized possession!) so we're suitably and rightly nervous when handing them over. I'll do valet parking, but my car has a valet mode that limits the horsepower and is an auto so I don't have to worry about fried clutches anymore.