Parking 101: On the Street

If you park on the street, and the meter is broken, you do not get free parking. Get a ticket from another machine, or park somewhere else (if it’s an older meter). If you do not, you will get a parking ticket. These tickets are issued by the police parking enforcement, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. There are two ways to avoid getting a ticket:

1) Pay for a ticket, and leave before ticket expires.
2) Don’t park on the street without paying (when you’re supposed to).

If the meter is broken, you get a ticket for not paying for parking. Calling me up and saying: “I would have paid, but your machines don’t work” is cool, but I hope you realize that good intentions don’t pay for shit. I know that this is inconvenient, but we try our best to make sure all machines are working well. We have thousands, and if 10 don’t work, people think we’re incompetent. However, it’s definitely better than getting a police ticket and trying to go through the court system to fight it.

If that is the route you wish to take, do not ask if phone conversations are recorded and that you’re going to “tell them that I called it in that the machine was broken.” In the years I’ve worked at the monitoring station, I have never received a phone call from anyone asking me if a certain machine was out of order, and if X customer was the one to call it in. Maybe customer service gets these calls during the day, but I’ll tell you why no one calls (or should call):

1) Your opinion really doesn’t mean shit. When customers tell us that “the machine is broken” it usually translates to “I didn’t use it properly.” If a technician opened up the machine to tell us it’s broken, that’s fine, but most problems are solved when I tell customers to read the signs around them and make sure that they’re allowed to park there. The only exception to the rule is if the machine is visibly broken.

2) It doesn’t prove anything. If someone calls me up and asks me if X person made a call, the only thing it shows is that you made a call and I answered the phone. How do I know you put money into the machine? I never witnessed the transaction, how are you asking me to vouch for you? I’m not insinuating that people who call are liars, but how can I credibly tell anyone that you’re telling the truth? Unless I’m on the line and hear the transaction happening, I’m just taking your word for it, and your word don’t mean shit (see reason 1).

So there you go. Check the signs, follow the instructions, and if you call our customer service line, they probably know more than you so listen. You really can’t fuck this up.

Voice

I’m putting on my jacket in the office and I’m about to leave to go home. This was at the end of my 10 hour shift and I’m pretty exhausted considering I didn’t get much rest the night before. As I’m zipping up my jacket I hear a customer scream.

“WHAT THE FUCK? LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Man! I hope I can get out of here before she notices I’m in here. But no! She knocks!

So I go out and she tells me to get back into the booth to take her transaction. Of course, the minute someone tells me to do something, I say no. Then she screams that her credit card got canceled and she needs to find a way to pay. I told her use coins. She told me she doesn’t have coins and she has to pay cash. Well bitch, you’re shit out of luck!

If she had just asked me rather than scream and curse at me, I would have found a better way to help her. And her voice was annoying. It was like talking to a banshee. So I told her to push the help button, and she refused, so I was like, “alright, hold on a second then.”

I go back inside, turn off the lights to my office, punch in the security code, locked up. Then left. I was exhausted, I didn’t want to deal with her anymore and she just stood there screaming at me as I walked away.