Jobs Worth Traffic Warden

Well it did not take long to get wound up. Yesterday I had to work in West London and the office car park was full. No worries there as we have car parking permits for the surrounding area. So I duly grabbed a couple of vouchers to cover my stay, located a parking space in the correct zone and filled out the vouchers. Things got a little busy in the afternoon, but my alarm went off and I got back to the car a full ten minutes BEFORE the second of the two vouchers expired.

On returning to the car I found a nice yellow sticker plastered to the windscreen. A $#@^%*! Jobs worth traffic warden had only seen fit to book me less than five minutes earlier and a full fifteen minutes before the vouchers expired – are you blind, could you not see the two vouchers side by side on the dashboard AND on the curb side? Maybe you just can’t add up correctly - $#@^%*!.

As luck would have it I found another traffic warden a mile or so up the road (not that same one luckily for him) but he kindly gave me a couple of minutes. On checking the vouchers he explained that although the vouchers say TIME OF ARRIVAL, they actually mean PERIOD OF VALIDATION. In other words, I arrived at 10:40 so I put 10:40 on both, the two vouchers adding up to six hours so I was good for that period. What I SHOULD have done was put 10:40 on one and 13:40 on the other. Needless to say, he advised me to appeal and which I have.

Well London Borough of *****, maybe you should get the $#@^%*! wording right on the $#@^%*! vouchers. If you mean people to fill in the period that the ticket is valid ‘from and to’, TELL PEOPLE – don’t be so $#@^%*!’ stupid and ask for the arrival time. Maybe next time I’ll put one voucher on at a time and drive round the block between vouchers – Oh, but then you’ll $#@^%*! get me for leaving and returning to the zone within some unspecified period of time.

People love stats, so try this one – three friends have seen the vouchers, two could not see what was wrong with them and one did pick up the (so called) error – only because he had been previously been done for something very similar recently. Only three people I agree, but I think I see a pattern here!!!!

My little bit of Cyberspace in which to rant and rave :)

In my younger days I used to watch Victor Meldrew on the TV and listen to Mr angry on Radio One and these sketches would often put a smile on my face, but I always thought life could never be like that. Well over the last few years my life has become busier and busier, my tinnitus is getting worse and with it my temper is getting shorter – MUCH shorter. As such, I now find that sometimes the smallest of things just make me want to rant, rave and generally vent my frustration.

Well with a few recent things happening I thought that now is the time to put pen to paper (well hit the computer keypad, wake up a few chips and get some circuits flowing) and a blog seemed just the right place. I won’t get personal, but occasionally you just might know who you are – like the driver of a silver Mercedes SLK doing 60mph and sitting in the middle lane of a practically empty M1 last night – maybe when you take your driving test you’ll learn to use the inside lane.

So here I am, another blog to add to the millions out in cyberspace already and my own little rant space on a server somewhere out in the ether.

Enjoy and don’t let the buggers drive you down ;).