Hiding Businesses from the Street, Following Instructions

The other day I was in the crowded Hunter's Crossing Shopping Center parking lot, back in the corner during a heavy rush hour period in the late weekday afternoon.  This place, which features a Publix, Piesano's Pizza,  Ace Hardware, and a Starbucks among other businesses, has three entry/exit points.  Depending on the traffic and where I'm coming from, I choose which one to use that will save me the most time and hassle.  But across the street from here (across NW 43rd Street) is another shopping center: Hunter's Walk.  Hunter's Walk is an example of that annoying type of shopping center...almost invisible from the street, hidden by trees and bushes with no store signs advertising their presence there.  Only a Walgreens, which was built almost up to the street, is visible from the road.  This place contains, among other businesses, a Cedar River seafood restaurant and a Little Caesar's.  The only access, in or out, is an intersection with a traffic light on 43rd.  The only indication that there is a shopping center here is an unobtrusive, low sign right there at the entrance...by the time you see and notice it you've probably already passed it! Why am I saying all this? Well,...

As I was saying, I was in that crowded parking lot late one busy afternoon.  I had returned to my car and was about to pull out when I heard a horn tooting behind me.  I looked back and saw a middle-aged man gesturing to me from his car.  It seemed he was driving around, fruitlessly looking for that Cedar River restaurant...could I please tell him how to get to it?  No wonder, I thought, that he couldn't find it with it hidden like that.  I then told him that he was in the wrong shopping plaza and for him to go back around and go to the nearby traffic light...and then go straight ahead, directly across it.  After that, I said, he would be able to turn into the shopping center with Cedar River.  And, oh, I said, it's at the end of the building closest to Walgreens.  He thanked me and went on and I congratulated myself on having been such a good Samaritan.  I pulled out of my parking space and drove up to the light into the left-turn lane (you see, I wasn't going to Cedar River, but rather home). As I approached, I saw the car with the driver I had talked to in the correct lane...to go straight across.   Then I saw him turn his head to the left, where he could see the Walgreens store.   Immediately he cut over in front of me into the left turn lane, apparently thinking he could get into the place from that direction.  No, no, no, I thought...dude, why couldn't you just follow my instructions? I almost put my car into "park" and got out to tell him of his mistake, but held back, realizing that some people just think they know better and have to learn things the hard way.  When the light changed, I saw him turn and then look for another entrance...which he never found.  I drove on home, wondering whether he had enough sense to go back to my explicit instructions and enter the shopping center where I had told him to.

One of my pet peeves in life is this tendency for some communities to put on a highbrow pretense and force incoming businesses to hide themselves from the public behind rows of hedges and trees while restricting their use of signs...as if their existence were somehow a blight on the aesthetics of the area.  Melissa and I were driving down I-75 near Tampa a while back and saw a sign on it advertising a Red Lobster at the next exit.  We got off the Interstate there and searched high and low for it.  Even with a GPS in the car, we kept approaching the spot it was supposed to be at and then would suddenly be leaving it behind.  Finally, after a few frustrating trials, we found it.  The restaurant was actually very close to the highway, but was hidden by bushes with no signs advertising its existence.  And to get to it you had to turn down a road off the highway and wind your way back around.  That's ridiculous, but, sadly, all too common!