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parking patrol

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Today while donating some old clothing at one of those collection boxes, I happened upon a parking enforcement fellow catching shit from a trio of rich-bitches that he'd just ticketed. After they'd fumed and stomped around for a while, he walked away from them, shaking his head and loudly advising them that it might help their case when arguing a ticket if they would be respectful.

I struck up a conversation with him, and asked if they'd been giving him grief. He told me that the one woman ("it's my BIRTHDAY" was all I'd been able to make out of her bleatings) had called him an asshole, and that on the job he'd been punched and even spat on. He said that people's kids would get in on the act, and that he'd been called every kind of name I could imagine.

I asked him if he'd seen The Delicate Art of Parking, and it turned out that he had. We discussed it. His favourite scene was one in which a female parking patrol agent turned the tables on the ticketee who was screaming at her, and gave him a taste of his own medicine.