Big Brother Is Watching You
I think cops and other official looking upholders of the law are on a quota that they need to fill each month. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why this would happen.
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 2:57 PM
To: appeals@****.com
Subject: Parking Violation Dispute
Importance: HighReference # 10112******
Dear 3rd Reich,
As I returned from shopping at Office Depot located at 4199 Lougheed Hwy in Burnaby today, I was extremely displeased but I cannot say I was surprised that I received a parking violation notice. You see, I have had fellow employees who have been wrongly accused for parking in the dedicated Office Depot/Tim Horton’s parking area as well by your ‘bush-league’ organization. The time indicated on the ticket as the moment of infraction lists 12:15pm. That is 3 minutes after I parked my vehicle. I’m not sure what kind of racket/pseudo business your guerilla bushmen are running here but I’m surprised I didn’t see “Patroller 44”, ‘goose-stepping’ over to my vehicle given the time frame allowed.
The most baffling and almost embarrassing part of this ticket is the actual action inciting the infraction: WALKED OFF PKG LOT. Are you kidding me? Is that even a ticket able infraction? Can I dial that up in the City of Burnaby By-Laws and get some sort of a description for that? Who are you people to justify my whereabouts as a human being?? Where is this demarcation point in which I so ignorantly crossed within your parking lot boundaries? Not that it is any business what so ever as too why I flew off your parking lot radar but if you must know I had seen an out of town client pulling into the parking lot above on my way to the Office Depot. He happens to be staying at the hotel as he is here on doing business with my company. The same company that needed to pick up a new scanner from the aforementioned merchant. I walked up to have a quick handshake and I returned down to the store.
I’m not sure what kind of hiring program you have your so-called patrollers hailing from, but it is got to be along the lines of, Prerequisites: Pulse and eye balls mandatory, half a brain an asset.
I’ve noticed on the top of this ticket it comes with some options: $50.00 if paid within 15 days
$65.00 if paid after 15 days
How much does it cost if I never pay? And I assure you if I am referred to any sort of Nazi-esque, outback collection agency there will be quiet a legal maelstrom to ensue. Can you tell me if patroller 44 or any of your other beat walkers are bondable? Can their actions or decision making ability be compromised by any sort of past nefarious or slanted activity? What is the level of credibility to this ticket issuance?
I’m going to wrap up this insatiable rant now, but before I do my one wish/hope is that you come to the realization that there are mistakes made and ridiculous situations in this life……and what happened to me in that parking lot this afternoon is absolutely paramount to hammering that point home.
Submitted By: Christien P
@crazyemails
This letter would be so much more effective if the writer had a better command of the English language and understood grammar and punctuation. There’s nothing worse than someone trying to sound intelligent and messing it up.
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
also, do you have a doctorate?
I bet you read your own comment 3 or 4 times before you posted it in order to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes for someone to pick up on and insult you like crazy for being a hypocritical douche by criticizing someone else’s mistakes while making one of your own. Run-on sentences are fun.
You reek of pretentiousness (no period for the sake of no period)
hav At ‘er,
KMAC, you’re totally right, and I agree. The person sounds completely justified with his rant, but he shoots himself in the foot with the way he’s written it. I don’t understand why people got upset with you for pointing that out. Posting people’s ridiculous emails, branding them “crazy,” and coming to the site to laugh at them is pretentious in and of itself. People coming to the site to laugh at other people’s emails and then calling others pretentious for doing the same are complete hypocrites.
Hey, it doesn’t bother me in the least how people take my comments. It’s actually kind of funny to read that some people think that trying to use proper grammar is pretentious. I spit coffee on my monitor when I saw that “Penguin” asked if I had my doctorate. Does that mean I can only criticize bad grammar if I have one? Talk about crazy e-mails… These angry responses yelling at people for merely having an opinion are funnier than the original e-mails. They can flame away all they want.
I have a doctorate in English and I couldn’t care less about grammar. Grammar is an artificial social construct that is constantly in flux. Very few people have excellent grammar skills and it’s far too easy to point out where others fail at grammar. This isn’t a professional document, it’s a letter written in frustration. Forgive the LW for not making sure there are no comma splices.
The message comes across quite clearly: I was parked in the Office Depot lot in order to go shopping at Office Depot and when I finished my business at Office Depot, I had received a parking ticket for Walking Off the Lot, which is quite necessary considering I had to enter the Office Depot in order to shop there. What is even more annoying is that the time stamp is a mere three minutes after leaving my car which indicates that the ticketing officer in question was lurking in the lot looking for someone to ticket.
Plus, as LB says: Run-on sentences are fun.
Yeah, whatever. It’s not a big deal. I understood the point of the letter. I just thought the juxtaposition of the way it was written and the way it was signed (which I now see has mysteriously vanished) was funny.
I couldn’t agree more. About grammar that is…
I agree with KMAC that it’s paradoxical and ruins the fun when someone tries to make a witty reply but ends up looking like an idiot because they can’t spell or express themselves properly. In such a case, the fun is ruined because the guy can not be taken seriously by the reader.
But we should take into account how bad the spelling/grammar is. In the present case, it’s not bad enough to make the guy look like a moron. The mistakes I see make him look like a person with at least average intelligence/education, and some mistakes are probably typos.
The fun would only be ruined if the guy’s mistakes were so bad they’d make him look like an illiterate idiot (e.g. all caps, at least one spelling mistake per word, no punctuation…).
So you mean to say that those “Parking for ____ only” signs are actually enforced? I’ve always just ignored them.
In certain areas, they are. In lager cities, cops keep an eye on ‘em.
It also depends on the size of the parking lot and a few other factors — basically, if people constantly park there and then don’t go into the store or building the parking area is designated for, making it difficult for actual customers and employees to get in, you bet your ass they’ll ticket and possibly even tow people. If it’s slow, the parking lot is large, and it’s not a common issue, chances are no one will notice anyway, but you could always be the unlucky one that does get noticed.
In lager cities? Please direct me immediately to any lager city you may know of. While you’re at it, I wouldn’t mind being informed of pilsner villages and ale towns you may be aware of as well.
Best response, you beat me to it.
Also: Pilsner Village wasn’t on my list if potentials, you got me there.
I’ve gotten tickets as unfair as this one. Once, I was parked in a legal parallel parking zone (that people park in EVERY DAY) – but one day, every car in the lane had a ticket. The reason? I was apparently “Within ten feet of the unobstructed parking zone.” I assume this meant that the end of the parking zone was approximately ten feet in front of my car. Which it was. But I was still IN the legal boundaries. As were all the other vehicles. ….But the other 364 days of the year, parking there was just fine.
I’ve noticed the Boston State Police pulling these tricks on many innocent citizens. It’s infuriating.
So is this guy saying that he parked in the Office Depot lot, walked off and went somewhere else, and then came back and finished up his shopping at Office Depot?
It seems to me that he really doesn’t have a case if all the officer could see was him parking and then not going to the place for which the parking is designated.
Simple solution: tell them you have a receipt for Office Depot, and they should be able to see that at some point on that trip you were there.
I’m iffy on these kinds of things. There’s this place here in town with a cd store next to a carpet store, with about 10 (if that) spaces b/w the two of them. But the carpet store has signs on well over 1/2 of the spaces designating them as theirs, with threats of towing. But I can guarantee that at any given time the majority of the cars there belong to people who are shopping in the cd store. And the structure of the street is such that there’s not really anywhere else to park easily.
I understand wanting to reserve some spaces, but that needs to be done within reason.
I understand wanting to reserve some spaces too. What I don’t understand is police enforcing this want.
I don’t want my son sitting all day in front of the television. Will the police come and ticket him for it? I don’t think so.
Depends really on who is paying to maintain them(snow removal, repaving et al) Around where I am at, a local business started placing boots on cars that were using their spots not not giving any business to them. Some folks with cars have a wacky entitlement about parking and have no respect for those who actually have to shoulder the cost of providing space for their customers.
A local business was booting cars?? In most places I’m aware of, booting is something that the police can do only if a car has a large number of outstanding fines. To have it done by or at the whim of a local business for a single infraction sounds pretty abusive. Where was this? Is booting for single violations common there?
actually, cops Do have a certain amount of tickets they need to write each month.
however, im not sure that “walking off the parking lot,” is ticketable.
If it’s a designated parking area (for a certain store or building) and he wasn’t going there, it is.
Well “Doctor” Peterson seems quite satisfied with himself. He should have taken an English class along the way through all that education.
Besides, as much as it sucks, if you left the premises, you left the premises. Sure, it was just for a minute, but where’s the cut off where it’s okay to give you a ticket? 2? 7? 15?
Self-submitted, too. So smug.
I heard somewhere that cops are expected to use common sense when giving parking tickets. Basically, they have to show they are smarter than automatic parking ticket dispensers (if such a thing existed). Applying the rules like robots and not tolerating any exception is frowned upon.
Considering how fast the ticket was issued, there is a good chance the cop was just waiting there for people to make a parking violation, and probably saw the guy only leaving to shake hands with someone and coming back to the store.
You had me at “Dear 3rd Reich.” Hah!
And, yes, police officers do indeed have quotas to fill.
The don’t have quotas, they just get really cool awards for getting the most. Get it right.
Can you say quota met!? In hard economic times this is going to happen more often than ever before. Budgets are being slashed and cities have to come up with that money somehow so they will start enforcing anything and everything they can.
Just follow the rules of posted signs and 99.9% of the time you won’t get a ticket, this guy just happened to be in an unfortunate .01%.
Jeezus Hopscotching Christ…!!!
There sure are a lot of grammer fluent assholes running around this site nowdays. I guess some of you will now remove the sticks from your collective asses and use them to swat the knuckles of anybody you see not conforming to the rules…
Strangemagic, I think I love you.
You spelled grammar wrong.
Being a grammar Nazi on the Internet is my revenge on the guys who constantly made fun of me in gym class =)
Whenever high school football players write something on the Web, they are playing on my field.
But I only correct them in Spanish, German, Italian, French and Russian, because I do not speak English very well.
Yeah!
I think some of you are missing a few things…
1. The ticket was NOT issued by a police officer.
– Patroller 44 is not a designation that would be given to a policeman.
– The ticket was issued by a lot attendant that worked for Diamand****. (see email header)
– He notes getting referred to a collection agency… a ticket from the city would have an option for a court hearing.
– He seems smart enough to me to know that skipping a ticket from the city is not a good move. Skipping a ticket from a non-gov’t parking enforcement company is purely a private affair.
2. He left the parking lot for only a short time to visit with a client that happened to be linked to the reason he was parking there in the first place.
I can forgive the atrocious butchering of the English language (and, yes, I have an advanced degree, so suck it), but I have a really hard time with the comparison to the Nazis and the Third Reich. IT’S A FUCKING PARKING TICKET. No one was killed. No one was forced onto a train and into a labor camp. No one’s civil rights and property were stripped away.
All I see here is a whiny little bitch who can’t suck up the fact that his overblown sense of entitlement was crushed by someone who successfully caught him ignoring posted signs.
And, Christien, sweetheart, it’s private property with stated use, so YES, that would be in the town by-laws. Suck it up and learn your lesson that you, my dear, are NOT special, and the rules are meant for EVERYONE, including you.
Have a nice day!
Kudos! You are my new favorite anonymous person that I don’t know!
Thank you!! Nazi and facist I believe are the most abused words in modern use. Hardly anyone seems to know what they mean yet they still use them.
It doesn’t sound like a police officer ticketed the person. It sounds like a ticket from one of these private “parking security” companies. Hence “Patroller 44″ rather than an actual name, questions as to the consequence for non-payment, and the e-mail address not ending in “.gov.” Just a thought.
Yes, big brother is always watching you.
yes, they’re are in the right, if it’s private property.
yes, the officer probably watched you walk off the lot, not knowing that you were just going to shake hands with your big customer on the upper level.
perhaps you should have left a note.
they are right, you are wrong. pay up,…. doc.
Wait, wait, wait…
I thought Big Brother was an allusion to COMMUNISM…
This dude’s writing about NAZISM…
Sure, both ideologies led to the murder of millions of ethnic and religious minorites, political dissenters and other social outliers, and created global schisms that took generations to repair, which eventually led to the outrageous practice of issuing parking tickets on private property, but they are two DIFFERENT ideologies that represent two very different ideals. So which is it?
Man, this letter is all SORTS of jacked up!
Feh — overboard. Just explain why you left the parking lot, produce the Office Depot receipt and call it a misunderstanding. No need to bring the Third Reich into this.
If it’s a private company throwing out tickets then how do they think they can collect a cent?
If I had a non official ticket issued I’d be adding it to my Charmin stockpile…
It’s probably not the company trying to issue tickets. If they have an issue like that, they can get the police to help them out and issue the ticket for them.
Really?
I didn’t know that…I guess I don’t know as much about how other places work.
In Texas the police don’t have authority on private property except for things like parking in fire lanes or in handicaped spots.
Try and get’em to issue a citation in a case of someone running a stop sign on the same parking lot and they just shrug their shoulders and say they can’t do anything until the offender hits the public street.
Same in Missouri. If you drive crazy or have an accident on private property (this includes parking lots) the police won’t come. They also won’t issue tickets. The security guards at the college I went to used to try and pull this, they would hover around the parking spaces with a 30 minute limit and ticket someone after 31 minutes. We would just send the tickets back to them with a note saying “You aren’t the police, you have no right to ticket us” and they never tried to collect the money.
Actually, on private property…they have every right to ticket you and collect the money. They also have the right to have your car towed.
So, my college campus just tows anyone who does not pay their ticket within 30 days. Then keeps towing them if they park in the lot again.
At the private college I attended in Missouri, the campus parking lot attendants would issue tickets and the school would withhold your grades and such if you didn’t pay up (I believe… I could be wrong about this, but this is what I recall).
At the college where I work, Campus Police are honest-to-god police officers (went to the Academy and everything), not some jumped-up private security yobbos. When they give you a ticket, they mean business. And if you don’t pay it, it comes out of your next state tax refund (or whatever else other money you may have coming from the guvmint). And yes, I know this from personal experience.
It depends on the local ordinances. Many things that are one way in one state are bassackwards in another state. Police here in MN can issue a “Tag for tow” on private property if the owner of the property signs the ticket. Or police may issue a ticket if the car hasn’t been registered as a vehicle with the state in more than two years.
I know at the time I was in school (and this is like 10 years ago), whatever ordinance or local regulation said that only police could legally enforce tickets. The school I went to did sometimes threaten to not let someone graduate until they paid their tickets, but they never enforced the tickets if you just stood up to them. I think they knew their policy was messed up, because the 30 min parking was for their registration and financial aid office, and it always took way longer than the 30 min to get anything done there. It was also fun to run out to our car at 30 min, pull around the lot, and park right back in the same space for another 30 min, which was a nice little loophole in their rules. Mostly it was fun to annoy the security guards, until they got rid of the cranky ones who wanted to pretend they were cops, and then they got some new ones who were much cooler.
Just some information from someone who lives 15 minutes from where this took place:
That lot is patrolled by a private parking enforcement company (there are two or three in the Vancouver area). Their only recourse for action to collect on a ticket is through a collection agency. I’m not sure what their towing policy is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did tow if you didn’t pay.
The enforcement guys at this lot are sticklers for getting anyone who might step two feet in the wrong direction. The area has a really small parking lot with five restaurants, a gym, an auto store, and a hotel. I’d say there are about 300 total parking spots in this lot.
They can’t tow you if you don’t pay. That’s called auto theft. (Unless your area has a mechanic’s lien law that applies to cases where you have no contract. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I suppose it’s possible.)
Private parking enforcement agencies can only sue you.
They could also require that you leave their property, and call the cops to forcibly remove you and your car if you refuse.
But, towing, no.
Booting, OTOH, maybe, but that would be counterproductive.
They can tow you if an officer issues a ticket for towing and the owner or manager of the property signs the tag. It’s not “autotheft” its enforcing the rights of the property owner. Parking on anothers’ property is a privelage not a right and the owner has no duty to let you keep your car on their property.
I’ve been to this office depot before…
I’m amazed that an empty parking lot justifies a full time watchman / ticket jockey.
They’re absolutely brutal – one more reason never to park in a private parking lot.
It’s true, cops are on a quota.
-Status Crap
Except this wasn’t a cop.
Police officers don’t have quotas, they just get awards or recognition for issuing the most tickets in a year.
Police departments may claim that they don’t have quotas, but I know for an absolute fact that at least one department near me does, in fact, have quotas. It may not be legal (not sure about that), it may not be right, but they nonetheless have quotas (and the “reward” for meeting these quotas is the privilege of not getting their asses chewed out by the higher-ups).
Departments that “have quotas” actually call them working standards. It’s a way that they try to ensure that the officers are working when there are no calls for service from citizens requiring an officer to respond. The alternative is that you pay for officers who don’t issue any tickets and just drive around in rectangles on your dime.
From what I’ve learned about parking rules over the years is that everyone loves a rule except when it applies to them.
Parking attendants are f’ing ruthless. I live in a city that has it’s own “parking enforcement squad” thing in the major neighborhood. 1 hour parking from 8am-7pm. They all ride around on little vespas with a checker-board pattern and bright yellow jackets and ticket everyone and anyone. Except on nights and weekends when people actually need to park. Then I’ve seen people parked on the corners of intersections without reprucussions, but I digress.
I went to city hall to get a permit to park in the neighborhood I was living in at the time, put it on my car and expected my drama with those buggers to end. I was wrong – the next morning I went out to my car to find two tickets. One for being parked in front of City Hall, and one for being parked in front of my apartment without a permit. Both were dated for the previous day (at 11pm the night before I had nothing on my car) and for the exact same time. Luckally I was able to challange the tickets because of the same time issue, but it was bizzare and a waste of 3 hours to get that cleared.
Later that year I got a parking ticket for “Parking without permit” with my permit right next to the ticket. When I went into city hall to clear it, there was another guy there with the same ticket from the same “officer”. I hope that jerkwad got fired.
I have actually parked in this parking lot…. in fact, my boyfriend has gotten a ticket in this lot. Bordering this particular lot is not only an Office Depot, but a Tim Horton’s (donut shop), a Boston Pizza and a hotel.
My boyfriend and I went to the Boston Pizza one Saturday evening, at a time when the Office Depot store wasn’t even open! We came out of the restaurant, and he had a ticket. I kid you not – they *must* have a full-time security guard sitting there 24/7 watching, waiting.
I’m guessing that if you went into the Tim Horton’s before going into Office Depot – even if your primary trip to that particular lot was to buy office supplies, but you just wanted to pick up a coffee before going shopping, you’d still get a ticket.
Those parking tickets where they tell you “Pay in the next 10 minutes now and it’s only $XX instead of $YY!!” are usually bogus.
You might want to do a bit of research on the law in your country, but in Australia we have these outdoor carparks where there’s no actual meter, you just have to display a free ticket on your dashboard. If you don’t remember to get a free ticket, they “fine” you. Only thing is, these places have no authority to obtain your personal info from your license details, and as such can never send you the fine. I have a collection of these tickets on my fridge at home for amusement.
hehe, that’s funny! i wonder why they would bother with such a system? they’re paying the costs of issuing free tickets. i dont get it. to keep track of how many cars are parked there and/or to have records of the time of each car’s arrival? but WHY??
I know exactly what parking lot this email is about! I have a parking ticket that has recently gone to collections as i have refused to pay it due to the same situations… there is a restaurant in the same area and it is fairly popular and I got my ticket during a major ice storm and I had to meet friends at the tim hortons (coffee & donut place) for a study session, I took the long way around (near the restaurnt) as the sidewalks were salted and free of ice, unlike the parking lot which is on a hill and there was no way I was going to walk down the icy slope and risk breaking my self.
I dont think this is a totally crazy email, I sympathize with this guy!! I am curious as to how you got this email, did the parking company send it in? If they did then that was obviously highly unprofessional!!
Wait, Tim Horton’s isn’t just in Canada? Or is the poor English because the email author also speaks French?
The person with an actual problem to address is the PIC of the businesses leasing space in this park. If I were a shopper and had such an encounter with parking, I would simply choose other vendors for my needs. As I am a retail shop owner, if I knew this kind of crap was going on in my parking lot, my landlord would get an earful, the parking lot owner/manager would get an earful and ultimately, real estate value will be dictated by someone losing a tenant or three.
Original email writer, be ye American or Canadian, if you really want justice, speak to the businesses who are affected by the brown shirts, schnell!
The parking lot in question is in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, making it fairly unlikely that the writer’s poor grammar is attributable to their French/English bilingualism. It is more likely that they are an ESL speaker, or that they were just too angry to be consistently grammatically correct.
I have no pity for someone who compares every slight injustice to Nazism. If he’d actually had any education on the true nature of life in Nazi Germany, or knew what the Nazis actually did to people, he’d know how incredibly disrespectful to their actual victims that is.
Geez, he got a parking ticket he didn’t like. Boo-hoo. At least he isn’t being sterilized or shipped to a death camp for political dissent or happening to be born into the wrong race or religion.
The only parking ticket I’ve ever gotten listed the violation as “ON GRASS”. If only.
The first thing that caught my eye when reading this was “Office Depot/Tim Horton’s parking lot”. Now I’m craving some Timbits. I know that it’s totally irrelevant, no need to tell me.
Any business that is so anal-retentive about their parking spots to have their own ‘goon squad’ to enforce the parking rules has to be laughable. I remember when I had to dash inside a local gym and grab something, so I parked my car in a yellow lane (ZOMG!) and dashed inside, nearly ripped off the lock to my locker, grabbed some things, and dashed back. I literally dashed in and out, total time less then 2 minutes. I’m sure it would take longer for emergency vehicles to arrive even in the off-chance there was an emergency at the exact time I was there.
Now yes if I’d been inside for about 5+ mins then by all means ticket me, I deserve it. But under 5 mins? Really?
This one parking-ticket-pig had the nerve to give me a citation. Funny thing was that as she was writing it, I was in and out before she could finish. I snatched the pad she was using, ripped off the ticket, threw the pad back in her face, got in my car, and drove off. If it had been a guy, I might’ve punched him in the face before I drove off. I don’t care, lol.
I never heard from that bitch again, and I’m not surprised. All it takes is someone to stand up to an anal-retentive and very bored parking person who has to meet their quota for the week and tell them you aren’t going to help them meet the quota and they can go f- themselves.
Contest the ticket yourself, save the lawyer money, and do anything you possibly can to make sure that none of the businesses in that area have any business from you or your friends.
After I was ‘ticketed’, I wrote a letter to each business there citing the ridiculous ‘parking police’ issue and how it makes customers feel like criminals rather then customers. There’s a line to be drawn and common sense to be had. If the pigs don’t use common sense then they are no better then f-in automated machines. Suffice it to say that the gym and several other of the businesses in that area are now out of business. I say good riddens.
Wait… I know that place!
It is a parking lot in Burnaby – one half of it is for Tim Horton’s customers and the other half is for Boston Pizza and Cactus Club customers. During dinner the Boston Pizza half is packed and people start to park in the Tim Horton’s half without realizing the parking lot is divided. As the leave their vehicle and enter the restaurants, they tend to be ticketed immediately.
As crazy as that e-mail is there is a little justification…. This kind of tactic to get money is kind a ridiculous.
I got the EXACT same parking ticket from the EXACT same parking lot. This lot is beside a Boston Pizza, but it isn’t the BP parking lot, so I got my shit fined $50.00. You know how all dogs go to heaven? Well all meter maids go to hell. Intolerable fucking swine.
godwin’d
I got a similar ticket at a parking lot in Richmond.. (another suburb of Vancouver, Canada).
The ticket also was written about 5 minutes after “walking off the lot”. It is in every way a money making scam, because if the lot attendant had seen us parking there and walking off, why wouldn’t they just come out and say, “Hey, you can’t park here!”? Instead of giving us a $50 fine (which we never paid by the way)?? I hate DPS (Diamond Parking Services)!!! This has happened to so many people..we should all be writing angry e-mails to them…!!
http://www.urbanvancouver.com/node/4178?page=1
Okay this parking lot is CRAZY. I’ve gotten several tickets there. it’s like this small parking lot with an office depot that has WAY more parking than needed and then there are 2 family restaurants and a tim hortons. Pretty much the parking lot is always 100% full for the restaurant and you are forced to park in the other parking. It has this small little entrance on a hill that people going to the restaurant resort to park on because they know if they park illegally in the cactus club/boston pizza area they are less likely to get ticketed then at the other parking. It’s silly. I’ve gone there to pick up a take out order and was there less than 5 minutes and I got a $50 ticket. Seriously, less than 5 minutes!!