The valet in July

Every July, the same scene outside a Riyadh restaurant. The valet stand, three men in white shirts, a rack of empty key hooks, and a street with free parking on both sides as far as you can see.

Some operators cut the valet for the summer. On a spreadsheet it makes sense. The customer can park themselves in ten seconds, and three wages are a cost against a month with nothing in it.

Some keep it, and the ones who keep it are not paying for parking.

The valet was never a parking service. In a full month it is a queue you do not have to stand in, a door somebody opens, a small ceremony that says this is the kind of place where a person takes your keys. The family arriving in one car, the guest brought here to be impressed, the father who did not want to circle the block twice: what all three were paying for was the moment a stranger reached for the keys.

In a dead month the convenience is worth nothing, because there is nowhere it is needed. The street is all space. Only the signal is still working, and it works harder than it does in November, because on an empty road it is the only thing on the pavement left to read.

So the operators who cut it told you what they thought it was for. They thought it was a car park. The ones who kept it were shown the same spreadsheet, and paid anyway.

Status costs the same in a dead month as in a full one. That is the whole point of it.