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Homecoming has come and went. And aside from Twitch threatening to shoot down the Goodyear Blimp (no, really, he did) nothing of major concern went down. I was kinda disappointed that the goofy-story harvest was a bit thin, but, well, you can't win em all. Enjoy.
Teaching Comprehension, at Sanity's Expense
Slim pulls into a parking lot where the owner has sic'd him on an illegally parked SUV.
As luck would have it, he gets 99% of the way to getting it loaded and out of there when a gaggle of college students at the next house OVER, come running and fess up that it's their car.
The usual worn-to-threadbare excuses are hurled, they were only there one minute, maybe two if you want to round up, but certainly not long enough to deserve to get towed! And besides, they'd been parking there all year and never got towed before! And why were they getting towed anyway? They got permission from the person who owns that spot to park there!
Slim says it doesn't matter who said they could park there, without permission, from the OWNER of the property, in the form of a little permit that dangles like a cute little monkey from the rearview mirror, then they aren't legally allowed on the property.
This doesn't compute with them, see, they had PERMISSION!
Slim again tells them permission means nothing, it's PERMITS they need, like the kind every other car in the lot has, he even points them out.
They still argue that they don't need a permit, they had PERMISSION! The guy who owns this spot, apparently, was going out of town and must have casually said to them words to the effect of "yeah, I don't care if you use it" and that was good enough for them! He said they could use it! They can't be towed! So they aren't paying!
Slim casually points to the big sign bolted to the rear porch of the house the lot sits behind and tells them to read it, it says:
PERMIT PARKING ONLY
VIOLATORS TOWED AT OWNERS EXPENSE
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TOWING XXX-XXXX
And that's when it got WIERD.....
They latched on to the "at owners expense" part like a bloodsucking fiend in a horror film and declared that it meant it was the OWNER OF THE SPACE who had told them to use it who had to pay for the tow, not them. So Slim needs to put their car down and go find and hassle the owner for the $65 drop fee.
Slim, after being stunned speechless by that level of reading comprehension failure, points out that it refers to the OWNER of the VEHICLE, not property.
They were having none of that
It says "at owners expense" and that means the property owner! Not them! They were quite adamant that it wasn't their tow to pay for.
Slim asked if they owned the vehicle he had hooked up
Yes, they said
Well, that's the person they're talking about on the sign, he explained
He might has well have been speaking Swahili, it went over their head, and they again claimed that they didn't have to pay for the tow, it was the "owners" job, and that meant the space owner. See? It says so right on the sign! Can't Slim read? It says OWNERS EXPENSE!!!!
Slim, having exhausted his supply of patience cuts to the chase and gives them their ultimatum, pay $65, now, or the car leaves with him, and if they get in the way, he'll just call the cops.
Grumbling, they pulled out a credit card, but made sure to remind Slim, several times in fact as he processed it, how unfair/unethical/illegal it was for him to do this to them. See, the sign says in black and white that THEY aren't responsible for the fees he's collecting, it's the OWNER. OWNERS EXPENSE!!!!!
Slim unhooked the car once the card cleared and returned to the shop with his doozy of a tale to tell us all.
His exact words on the matter were: "I don't think they could have figgur'd out how to work an Etch-a-Sketch, I'm amazed they could sign their own name on the credit card slip"
As for me, I can only wonder: The millions of years humanity spent climbing to the top of the foodchain, and THIS is what we get as a reward? Sheesh.
There is no Spoon, That Ain't no Spoon!
I'm sad to report that no shenanigans have occurred down at the ol' abandoned burger place we started towing from. Not that it hasn't been BUSY. Oh no. Perish the thought dear child. In the two weeks we've had it as ours, we've towed 90 some cars. You read that right, I even checked the numbers in the computer log to make sure it was almost into triple-digits and not a result of my rather poor mental math skills putting a decimal point in the wrong place.
Speaking of which, 99.9999999% of the "complaints" so far are, *sigh*, say it with me folks, you know the one:
Yep, in the lot that we put 4 signs up in, three more than the Borough regulations require, one at each entrance, and one on each side of the building that faces the lot.
Though Slim did get a pretty good one on a drop the other night. The owner came up to him while he was hooked and demanded how he was supposed to know he couldn't park there.
Slim obligingly pointed to the closest "no parking" sign, to which the customer looked at, thought about it for a second and then declared:
"That ain't no sign!"
I really wish I could come up with something funny and snarky to end this segment, like I usually do, but everytime I go back and re-read that bit of pure weapons-grade inanity, well, another hundred or so of my brain cells pack their bags, get their passports stamped and leave my head for greener pastures. So I'll just leave it up to you all to imagine your own stinger for it. As it is right now, if I read it one more time, I might start unwittingly drooling all over the keyboard.
Party Like You're Rock Stupid... Party Like You're Rock Stupid...
Every semester, there's that one "Problem" house that seems to have a party going on at it every, single, night where, improbably, the entire population of several Micronesian islands manages to cram itself into a place that only has one floor and half a bathroom and plays music at a volume that would drown out a 747 at takeoff. At least until the police inevitably show up and kick the anthill, causing everyone to scatter except that one too-high dude who doesn't come to his senses until he's in the backseat of their Suburban amongst his new riot-gear wearing buddies.
Bedlam's address tends to move around every semester, an artifact of the tenants getting the boot and told never to return by their previous landlord.
This semester, it's landed at 900 California Avenue, a fittingly low-rent apartment block on a fittingly dead end street that's fittingly RIGHT NEXT to the city's sewage plant, lending the whole place an aroma befitting it's residents when they turn on the pumps at 2am. Yeah, I just LOVE going in here
ESPECIALLY on warm July nights 
Actually, all that aside, I do like it. Why? Cuz' "party folks" are DUMB. I mean, really dumb. How dumb? We got 15 cars from one building in one shift dumb. Asking me if I'm "some kind of cop".... while towing cars, while wearing a Hawaiian shirt dumb. (Yes, I do, because I can and management is too happy with my production to enforce dress code
) They park on the grass and wonder where the car went dumb. A tow truck can be loading a car, and another load of partiers will pull in, wait for our truck to leave, and then pull into the vacated spot.
That might just be the worst. I had one five-spot of folks who did just that. They pulled around me as I was checking to make sure the car I had indeed had no permit, emptied out of their ride, and just walked around me like I was a puddle. Something to be avoided but not considered worthy of attention. (Which to be fair, I kinda am) Nonetheless, FIVE people, and none of them thought to consider what I was doing? And the same might happen to them? They didn't even LOOK at me.
Wanting to be at least a little charitable, I called out to them as they passed.
"Excuse me? But if that's your car you can't park here"
None looked up, they just kept walking.
I took a couple steps after them "Hey! Is this your car?"
One of them turned to look at me, and then the group continued walking, off to whatever was more entertaining than the lone voice warning them of impending doom. If this disregard for imminent danger is how your average person in a modern technologically advanced society acts, well, no wonder only one person managed to get off planet Krypton alive and why Caesar ended up a pincushion on the Senate floor during the Ides of March.
Oh well, I tried to warn em'.
The next truck in line after I left took their car, and yes, another car pulled into that spot immediately after he left. But only after he had to stop work several times because people en route to the party kept stepping BETWEEN his truck and said car, oblivious to the noisy lit-up working end of a piece of machinery with hydraulically-assisted moving parts that won't react well to soft, squishy, human tissues
Don't ever stop partying, party-people, you are so awesome*
*for our bottom line.
We Tried to Warn Him Too
Dear Sir, I understand you weren't thrilled about getting towed from your own apartment complex, but, the rules of that lot say you have to have your permit up and visible. What it was doing in your pants pocket instead of in your car is not my concern. We even give you the 15 minute wait, more than enough time to run into the building and get a permit and get back out, and once you notice the car gone, it's too late. Kinda like how it's too late to repay that gambling debt once Vinnie shows up at your house, even if you do have enough in the bank to cover it by then. You got towed, sorry, you owe $115, your car doesn't leave the impound alive until we collect it.
You should also consider that after I turned down your "generous" $40 bribe to let your car out without full payment because "no one will know", and the other tower standing next to me likewise turned down your "generous" $40 bribe, and the guy who towed your car itself who was filing away the paperwork for the tow in the log book turned down your "generous" $40 bribe..... After all of that, well, maybe you should stop asking for another employee and concede that we're an honest company that DOES NOT TAKE BRIBES?
Nah, that's too easy.
I especially like the fact that we kept progressively warning you, to a man, to the word, that the next guy you asked for was not going to take a bribe, you still insisted, I think "How do YOU know that?!" was how you so elegantly put it. In fact, you only stopped when you ran out of on-site employees to try and bribe, it was a really amazing display of tenacity.
Oh, and that last guy you tried to bribe? Evening manager, reports directly to towing manager in the morning, and there goes any chance you had of leniency, he'll sometime knock tows down to drops for people who have permits but for whatever reason forget to put them up, but once you try bribery? Bullet, meet foot, you two will get along swell.
Why the World Needs Me
There can't be a more potent distillation of why I still have a job than this:
An apartment in town here has one row of parking along one exterior wall of the building. Right in the middle, they put up a 6 x 10 foot sign that says
Now, that sign actually doesn't meet Borough regulations for a number of piddly reasons, so when we started towing from there, we added our own sign underneath it, smaller, but reflective that says
So that's two signs, double-decker, right on top of each other suck to the wall with bolts right in front of the middle-most parking stall in the lot. If you pull into this spot, the center of these signs will line up exactly with the centerline of your car, if cars still had hood ornaments, you'd be looking at our phone number right though the middle of yours.
We got only one car from there this weekend, wanna take a wild guess which spot he parked in? And it's multiple choice, there were multiple open spots.
Go on, guess.
Correct answers worth 0 pts.
Teaching Comprehension, at Sanity's Expense
Slim pulls into a parking lot where the owner has sic'd him on an illegally parked SUV.
As luck would have it, he gets 99% of the way to getting it loaded and out of there when a gaggle of college students at the next house OVER, come running and fess up that it's their car.
The usual worn-to-threadbare excuses are hurled, they were only there one minute, maybe two if you want to round up, but certainly not long enough to deserve to get towed! And besides, they'd been parking there all year and never got towed before! And why were they getting towed anyway? They got permission from the person who owns that spot to park there!
Slim says it doesn't matter who said they could park there, without permission, from the OWNER of the property, in the form of a little permit that dangles like a cute little monkey from the rearview mirror, then they aren't legally allowed on the property.
This doesn't compute with them, see, they had PERMISSION!
Slim again tells them permission means nothing, it's PERMITS they need, like the kind every other car in the lot has, he even points them out.
They still argue that they don't need a permit, they had PERMISSION! The guy who owns this spot, apparently, was going out of town and must have casually said to them words to the effect of "yeah, I don't care if you use it" and that was good enough for them! He said they could use it! They can't be towed! So they aren't paying!
Slim casually points to the big sign bolted to the rear porch of the house the lot sits behind and tells them to read it, it says:
PERMIT PARKING ONLY
VIOLATORS TOWED AT OWNERS EXPENSE
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TOWING XXX-XXXX
And that's when it got WIERD.....
They latched on to the "at owners expense" part like a bloodsucking fiend in a horror film and declared that it meant it was the OWNER OF THE SPACE who had told them to use it who had to pay for the tow, not them. So Slim needs to put their car down and go find and hassle the owner for the $65 drop fee.
Slim, after being stunned speechless by that level of reading comprehension failure, points out that it refers to the OWNER of the VEHICLE, not property.
They were having none of that
It says "at owners expense" and that means the property owner! Not them! They were quite adamant that it wasn't their tow to pay for.
Slim asked if they owned the vehicle he had hooked up
Yes, they said
Well, that's the person they're talking about on the sign, he explained
He might has well have been speaking Swahili, it went over their head, and they again claimed that they didn't have to pay for the tow, it was the "owners" job, and that meant the space owner. See? It says so right on the sign! Can't Slim read? It says OWNERS EXPENSE!!!!
Slim, having exhausted his supply of patience cuts to the chase and gives them their ultimatum, pay $65, now, or the car leaves with him, and if they get in the way, he'll just call the cops.
Grumbling, they pulled out a credit card, but made sure to remind Slim, several times in fact as he processed it, how unfair/unethical/illegal it was for him to do this to them. See, the sign says in black and white that THEY aren't responsible for the fees he's collecting, it's the OWNER. OWNERS EXPENSE!!!!!
Slim unhooked the car once the card cleared and returned to the shop with his doozy of a tale to tell us all.
His exact words on the matter were: "I don't think they could have figgur'd out how to work an Etch-a-Sketch, I'm amazed they could sign their own name on the credit card slip"
As for me, I can only wonder: The millions of years humanity spent climbing to the top of the foodchain, and THIS is what we get as a reward? Sheesh.
There is no Spoon, That Ain't no Spoon!
I'm sad to report that no shenanigans have occurred down at the ol' abandoned burger place we started towing from. Not that it hasn't been BUSY. Oh no. Perish the thought dear child. In the two weeks we've had it as ours, we've towed 90 some cars. You read that right, I even checked the numbers in the computer log to make sure it was almost into triple-digits and not a result of my rather poor mental math skills putting a decimal point in the wrong place.
Speaking of which, 99.9999999% of the "complaints" so far are, *sigh*, say it with me folks, you know the one:
There Were No Signs!!!!
Yep, in the lot that we put 4 signs up in, three more than the Borough regulations require, one at each entrance, and one on each side of the building that faces the lot.
Though Slim did get a pretty good one on a drop the other night. The owner came up to him while he was hooked and demanded how he was supposed to know he couldn't park there.
Slim obligingly pointed to the closest "no parking" sign, to which the customer looked at, thought about it for a second and then declared:
"That ain't no sign!"
I really wish I could come up with something funny and snarky to end this segment, like I usually do, but everytime I go back and re-read that bit of pure weapons-grade inanity, well, another hundred or so of my brain cells pack their bags, get their passports stamped and leave my head for greener pastures. So I'll just leave it up to you all to imagine your own stinger for it. As it is right now, if I read it one more time, I might start unwittingly drooling all over the keyboard.
Party Like You're Rock Stupid... Party Like You're Rock Stupid...
Every semester, there's that one "Problem" house that seems to have a party going on at it every, single, night where, improbably, the entire population of several Micronesian islands manages to cram itself into a place that only has one floor and half a bathroom and plays music at a volume that would drown out a 747 at takeoff. At least until the police inevitably show up and kick the anthill, causing everyone to scatter except that one too-high dude who doesn't come to his senses until he's in the backseat of their Suburban amongst his new riot-gear wearing buddies.
Bedlam's address tends to move around every semester, an artifact of the tenants getting the boot and told never to return by their previous landlord.
This semester, it's landed at 900 California Avenue, a fittingly low-rent apartment block on a fittingly dead end street that's fittingly RIGHT NEXT to the city's sewage plant, lending the whole place an aroma befitting it's residents when they turn on the pumps at 2am. Yeah, I just LOVE going in here
ESPECIALLY on warm July nights Actually, all that aside, I do like it. Why? Cuz' "party folks" are DUMB. I mean, really dumb. How dumb? We got 15 cars from one building in one shift dumb. Asking me if I'm "some kind of cop".... while towing cars, while wearing a Hawaiian shirt dumb. (Yes, I do, because I can and management is too happy with my production to enforce dress code
) They park on the grass and wonder where the car went dumb. A tow truck can be loading a car, and another load of partiers will pull in, wait for our truck to leave, and then pull into the vacated spot. That might just be the worst. I had one five-spot of folks who did just that. They pulled around me as I was checking to make sure the car I had indeed had no permit, emptied out of their ride, and just walked around me like I was a puddle. Something to be avoided but not considered worthy of attention. (Which to be fair, I kinda am) Nonetheless, FIVE people, and none of them thought to consider what I was doing? And the same might happen to them? They didn't even LOOK at me.
Wanting to be at least a little charitable, I called out to them as they passed.
"Excuse me? But if that's your car you can't park here"
None looked up, they just kept walking.
I took a couple steps after them "Hey! Is this your car?"
One of them turned to look at me, and then the group continued walking, off to whatever was more entertaining than the lone voice warning them of impending doom. If this disregard for imminent danger is how your average person in a modern technologically advanced society acts, well, no wonder only one person managed to get off planet Krypton alive and why Caesar ended up a pincushion on the Senate floor during the Ides of March.
Oh well, I tried to warn em'.
The next truck in line after I left took their car, and yes, another car pulled into that spot immediately after he left. But only after he had to stop work several times because people en route to the party kept stepping BETWEEN his truck and said car, oblivious to the noisy lit-up working end of a piece of machinery with hydraulically-assisted moving parts that won't react well to soft, squishy, human tissues
Don't ever stop partying, party-people, you are so awesome*
*for our bottom line.
We Tried to Warn Him Too
Dear Sir, I understand you weren't thrilled about getting towed from your own apartment complex, but, the rules of that lot say you have to have your permit up and visible. What it was doing in your pants pocket instead of in your car is not my concern. We even give you the 15 minute wait, more than enough time to run into the building and get a permit and get back out, and once you notice the car gone, it's too late. Kinda like how it's too late to repay that gambling debt once Vinnie shows up at your house, even if you do have enough in the bank to cover it by then. You got towed, sorry, you owe $115, your car doesn't leave the impound alive until we collect it.
You should also consider that after I turned down your "generous" $40 bribe to let your car out without full payment because "no one will know", and the other tower standing next to me likewise turned down your "generous" $40 bribe, and the guy who towed your car itself who was filing away the paperwork for the tow in the log book turned down your "generous" $40 bribe..... After all of that, well, maybe you should stop asking for another employee and concede that we're an honest company that DOES NOT TAKE BRIBES?
Nah, that's too easy.
I especially like the fact that we kept progressively warning you, to a man, to the word, that the next guy you asked for was not going to take a bribe, you still insisted, I think "How do YOU know that?!" was how you so elegantly put it. In fact, you only stopped when you ran out of on-site employees to try and bribe, it was a really amazing display of tenacity.
Oh, and that last guy you tried to bribe? Evening manager, reports directly to towing manager in the morning, and there goes any chance you had of leniency, he'll sometime knock tows down to drops for people who have permits but for whatever reason forget to put them up, but once you try bribery? Bullet, meet foot, you two will get along swell.
Why the World Needs Me
There can't be a more potent distillation of why I still have a job than this:
An apartment in town here has one row of parking along one exterior wall of the building. Right in the middle, they put up a 6 x 10 foot sign that says
PRIVATE LOT 24/7
PARKING FOR TENANTS ONLY
VIOLATORS TOWED
PARKING FOR TENANTS ONLY
VIOLATORS TOWED
Now, that sign actually doesn't meet Borough regulations for a number of piddly reasons, so when we started towing from there, we added our own sign underneath it, smaller, but reflective that says
PERMIT PARKING ONLY
VIOLATORS TOWED
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TOWING
XXX-XXXX
VIOLATORS TOWED
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TOWING
XXX-XXXX
So that's two signs, double-decker, right on top of each other suck to the wall with bolts right in front of the middle-most parking stall in the lot. If you pull into this spot, the center of these signs will line up exactly with the centerline of your car, if cars still had hood ornaments, you'd be looking at our phone number right though the middle of yours.
We got only one car from there this weekend, wanna take a wild guess which spot he parked in? And it's multiple choice, there were multiple open spots.
Go on, guess.
Correct answers worth 0 pts.
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