Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Parking Violations

Today was my day in "court" to fight my $300 parking ticket from last November. Just as a quick recap, I actually went to jury duty instead of lying my way out of it, check my cell phone because people can't be trusted to shut them off ANYWHERE, left, paid for parking in a lot all day, drove off and forgot my phone. I turned around, pulled up out front, put on the blinkers and ran in to grab the phone and SURPRISE! lovely Rita, the meter maid was on my jock with a $300 ticket for parking in a handicap spot. Anyway, I had my Stepdad work his magic and grease up some Northeast Philly representative so that I could have this ticket squashed. The instruction I was given was pretty simple. I was told to show up for my court date, sign in, plead Not Guilty and the rest would be taken care of.

First of all, parking ticket court doesn't even take place in a court. It's grubby, run down, office in center city with a bunch of closets for offices. They don't even have a working public bathroom! The place was packed when I showed up, apparently they must churn through 200 people a day minimum. Yikes. So I signed in and waited for my name to be called. 45 minutes later, I got my moment in the sun with Renault Simpson (the traffic court case worker or whatever the fuck her was). This guy was like 22 years old, no personality and sounded like a robot. Didn't matter, I was just there to go through the motions right? I'm sure the computer will tell him that this ticket is "taken" care of by some politico up in the Great NEAST. Imagine my surprise when the guy starts to ask me to defend myself for parking in a handicap spot. Before I could digest what he is asking me I start in with the tale about jury duty, cell phone, yadda yadda, and the whole time the guy is like half listening at best. Then he asks me about the other ticket I got last month. What?!?!?! I didn't get a ticket last month. Renault tells me that I did on 2/18 on N. 16th Street. He prints out the ticket and begins to tell me that I'll have to pay for that ticket in addition to my $300 ticket. WAIT A SECOND!!! I start looking over a copy of the latest ticket and notice that it says that my car color is BLUE and I drive a SILVER car. And then I look at the plate and instead of starting with FLT like my plate does, it was FTT. So I speak up and let Renault know that I don't think this ticket is mine at which point he looks annoyed with me. "Why not?" he exclaims. I point out the inconsistencies and he matter of factly says "you are right, this ticket has been removed from your record." No shit I'm right. Now moving back to the real reason I'm there, Renault says he will waive my late fees but that I have to pay the $300 fine and to not park in handicap spots and that's it.

I'm fucking confused. Where was my fix? I thought I was going through the motions? If I had to pay anyway, I would have just paid it and not even bothered with taking off from work and showing up to that hell hole. Clearly I have the money, it's just the principle to me, that I was doing my civic duty and some fucking bitch meter maid busted my balls. Sometimes I fucking hate living in the big, bad city. This is one of them.

Addendum: As of 7:45 PM, the strings have been pulled and I'm good to go. My $300 ticket has been exspunged by Mike Stack, Democrat. Rock on Mike!

1 comment:

Me said...

Sorry to disappoint you Susie...your anger towards the city is warranted, but I'm glad I got off today.