Unfiltered Story #193921

(I’m a security officer in the mall in town. Specifically, I’m the dispatcher in the security office that takes all the phone calls from patrons and management before sending out the information to who it all needs to go to. Part of our job is to issue vehicle citations to vehicles we know either belong to employees and aren’t in employee parking, or just overall improperly parked cars. Our citations don’t have any sort of fine to them. Sometimes, however, the city traffic officers come by our parking lots and issue fines to vehicles that aren’t parked properly or are in handicap parking without the proper placard on. I often get calls like this when that happens.)

Me: “Thank you for calling [Mall name], Officer [My name] speaking, how can I help?”

Patron: “Yes, hello, so I spoke to you guys before a few months ago about a parking citation I got about parking in the handicap parking with expired tags. But I sent you guys the copies of the updated placards already and still got fined $500!”

(The city doesn’t tell us when they cite vehicles on our property, so I have virtually no knowledge of what she’s talking about. Her telling me about the fine is the only way I know it wasn’t us that cited her.)

Me: “… Ma’am, just to verify, you’re saying that you were fined by the city?”

Patron: “Yes. I’m with the sheriff’s right now, but who do I need to speak to in order to get this cleared up?”

Me: “Well, ma’am, our citations done have fines on them. So if you were cited and fined by the city, you would have to speak with them.”

Patron: “Okay, so who do I need to talk to?”

Me: “You mentioned you were with the sheriffs right now, correct?”

Patron: “Yes.”

Me: “To be honest, ma’am, they would most likely be able to help you out more than I can.”

(We get these calls every so often. Every time I tell my shift supervisors about these calls, they can only shake their heads.)