Yeah, that's the ticket.

Let's talk about parking tickets, shall we?

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Timing is Everything

See the title of this piece? I've always heard this. And I believe it too. But whose timing? When I was growing up, our cat always seemed to know when our father was coming home. I can't imagine why as our father never fed the little guy and wasn't even generally predisposed to liking cats at all. He didn't like the smell or the cat hair all over the place...but I digress. The point is animals have wonderful internal clocks. Humans seem to have poor internal clocks and this job proves it to me every day. Here are some examples: A person will park at a 10 minute, 20 minute, 30 minute, 1 hour, 2 hour, 90 minute, 3 hour, or amazingly even a 4 hour zone and incredibly, unbelievably, astoundingly not make it back in time and we, as is our job, will write the ticket. But then, of course, many times as we are writing that ticket THEN they show up (Murphy, I curse you AND your law). They argue with us and we (and by we I mean I because I don't know what my colleagues do really) shake our heads in complete bemusement.

By the way, it's futile to argue with me because you are not really arguing with me. You are arguing with the big, fat, juicy chalk mark on your tire and big, fat, juicy chalk marks don't lie. When I point that out, people usually calm down. Although I have had people snatch the ticket out of my hand (bad form), crumple it up (worse form), and throw it on the ground (really embarrassingly no-good form, if you ask me). I've even had people tear the thing up, throw it into the street and drive off triumphantly. I wonder how they feel (and I'd love to be the proverbial fly-on-the-wall to see how they react) when they find that I have simply re-printed the ticket and mailed it to their house, even out of state.

Oh yeah, back to timing. I hear, "But I just ran in for a minute" a lot which I have discussed before. Mostly this is simply untrue. Things don't happen that quickly and here I mean things like running into the store, going to the ATM, running into the post office (puuulll-eeeezzeee), or into the vet's office, doctor's office, dentist's office, or the DMV!!! (Honestly, what do you people think we'll fall for anyway?)

I guess I'm posting this because we've just gone back onto daylight savings time. You'd think with all the daylight people have saved over all these years, they'd be, I don't know, brighter.

Ten-Seven.

A personal note to Ezra: You give me hope.

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