By: Billy BeerSlugger
So I got a parking ticket recently while parked on the street at the University of Penn. I parked on the street because the lot was full and I had to continually put quarters in the meter. Somewhere around 2PM I went out to put more quarters the meter and the time was not registering. Quarters in, no time allotted on the meter. I’m not sure whether the meter was full or broken or what but it seemed to have worked up until that point. I even went as far as to document this phenomenon in a grainy Blackberry video.
So I put a note on the hood of the car saying that the meter was broken and low and behold I get a parking ticket, $36. Now I have some proof that this happened on my phone but the real question is whether or not to dispute it. I would save a couple dollars by paying the fine and actually working for the two or so hours it would take me to fight the ticket in court. So what do you do here? Take the fine even though it’s not your fault or take the time out of the workday or lose more money in lost work time then I would if paid the fine and get my ass to court?
Well it seems somewhat counter intuitive but I’m going to fight this parking ticket. I don’t like the idea of admitting guilt when I didn’t do anything wrong. I could see if I just parked the car and forgot about it all day. I would take the fine no big deal. However, I did go out every 3 hours, get an obscene amount of quarters from various lunch trucks and feed the meter so I didn’t get a ticket. It just so happens the meter broke on the 3rd time I had to put $4 worth of quarters in it.
I have no reason to lie to you the reader or the court about the truthiness of the parking situation but I am opening myself up to not only losing money on the parking ticket but also the lost wages. I would just rather not admit guilt to something when I’m not guilty.
Now I know sometimes in relationships men are ostensibly forced to apologize for things they don’t feel like are big deals or even infractions and I have been guilty of this from time to time just to continue with regular sexual activity. This, however, is a different situation. This is me against the Parking Authority and if I don’t stand up for myself they will continue to screw me. As opposed to apologizing to your girlfriend for something stupid and being able to screw her again.
I’ll let you know how pissed I am when this whole thing backfires right in my face.