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!!!!