The Misfortune Of The Meter Maids’ Money-Making Machinations

The town where I used to work retail has a big parking lot near the city center. Most people who work in the stores and boutiques of said city center park their cars there every day for very cheap. Other than this huge open-air parking lot, the only parking is a few spaces in the old town center — where parking is limited to one hour at a time and the meter maids are super strict — or two parking garages that cost a small fortune for a day’s worth of parking and are thus only ever used by shoppers or tourists for a few hours at most.

Twice a year, however, the city uses the big cheap parking lot as the location to host a big, two-week-long fair/festival. Not only does the festival take up half the parking lot, but the city also ropes off 90% of the remaining parking spaces and ramps up the parking fees from 1€ a day to 10€ — literally a 900% increase — without offering any parking alternative to the people actually working in the city. As you can imagine, there is harsh competition over the remaining few parking spaces.

I usually arrive at work early and still manage to find one of those very rare spots, but one day, I end up a few minutes later than usual and find myself faced with the harsh reality of no more empty spaces. I am not the first one with that problem, either, as there are several cars that are simply parked on one of the grass areas of the small park next to the parking lot. Being a desperate minimum-wage worker myself with no means to spend ten bucks on parking just like that, I just do the same. Surely the meter maids will understand the stupid situation all of us workers have been forced into by the city, right?

Yeah, sure.

That evening, after a nine-hour shift at work, I return to my car to find a ticket on my windshield for illegal parking. I am pissed. Well, at least the ticket is no more expensive than parking in one of the garages or on the currently much more expensive lot would have been, so I suppose it was worth a try.

And then I notice that, out of all the other cars on the grass around mine — all of which I recognize as the same cars that have also been there since this morning, just like mine — mine is the only one with a ticket.

Whatever meter maid decided to pick out my car specifically for their power trip, I hope they step on a Lego.