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Oh joy, another home football weekend, and since the home team handed in a "suck the exhaust pipe" performance and got demolished by double-digits, on homecoming no less, the parade of illegal parkers this week have been quite whiny, unhappy and butthurt indeed. They don't know butthurt, not till next week, when the NEW towing fees take effect! 
The oft unheard-from executive branch of civic government around here has just upped the impound fees to $130 for a tow and $75 for a drop. Chew on THAT pacifier you big screamin' babies!
Back to Civics Class for Ye!
99.9% of the public is in dire need of a quick afternoon seminar on the most ragged-edged basics of criminal and civil law in this country. That would cut down on the time they spend arguing "legal" points with me that are not only wrong, but sometimes don't even approach enough internal logical coherence to even be considered wrong in the first place.
Specifically you, good Sir. I am, of course, referencing your claim:
"You had NO right to tow my car! I did NOTHING illegal!"
It goes without saying that yes, yes we did have the right to tow you, since you DID in fact, park illegally, which by definition, is against the law.
You're just wrong, wrong, I'll say it again, W-R-O-N-G. As in not right, not right at all. NOTHING you said was correct.
It was so much concentrated wrong, you put us all in mortal danger. Should you have tacked on "and the sky is purple" at the end of your rant, it would have created an incorrectness singularity so massive and acute, it would have swallowed the whole neighborhood in a vortex of pure wrong, pushed it though the wrongness horizon inside, and shoved it out the other side where we'd find ourselves living in Whackyland amongst the Do-do birds..... A dody oh do do do do dody oh do do da do do do awhooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
Deep Doo-Doo
-I'm here to pick up my car
-What kind and from where?
-Black Ford, California Av Apartments
-Ah, yes we have that, it will be $115 cash or credit.
-Can I ask why I got towed? Because, I have a permit
-That permit was tampered, the dates were altered
-That's BULLS*IT!
...
...
...
Yes, yes it was. Forging a permit is a typical garbage-in-garbage-out setup. You get back what you put in. And when you put bullshite effort into it, you get back a big ol' steaming dump. Your "modifications" to what was once a legit permit were as subtle and smooth as if you had left a genuine cow pie on the dashboard for me to find instead.
Those were the WORST attempts to change the dates on a temp pass I've seen in a long time. I couldn't honestly tell what the ORIGINAL dates were nor your preferred alternates.
Near as I could tell that permit was good from "cryptic squiggle" to "jumbled scribble" and here we are at "disorganized scrawl" so it's expired anyway
Unless that's not what you meant, and if you meant something else was BS about all this, you didn't elaborate any further, you just gave me your credit card after your loud and unilateral denouncement of bovine fecal matter on me...
I like to think the fact the credit card machine went down AND the printer jammed twice trying to get you a receipt was either karma or some GENUINE bullshite for your enjoyment.
Either way, haw-haw.
Not Even Wrong
Guy at a rental property notes that an SUV has pulled into the alcove along the alley side of the building where the recycling bins are, blocking them in. Since this means the recycling truck can't get to them, (your 4 way flashers do not make you intangible, you're still blocking stuff wether you have them on or off) he calls us to remove the offender. We get about 90% of the way into removing him when he comes a runnin' out of the building.
"Woah! Woah! Comeon! I just stayed a bit too long!" the guy says.
That's not.... that's not even an excuse, that's just a declaration of fact. And you expect that to have any influence on the current situation? You seemed surprised it didn't. Angry even. So upset that you pulled out your wallet to pay, I presume, and then had a premature aggravation and THREW THE WALLET. You didn't even throw it at us... you... heaved it across the street. That's one way to do charity work, but not the most efficient by a long shot. You eventually calmed down enough to pay, and were generally polite, but, you seem to not understand the difference between EXPLANATION and JUSTIFICATION.
A precise explanation does not a valid excuse make
That's Called Blackmail, Honey
So, you've illegally parked at a parking meter (the illegality stemming from the fact that you didn't PAY it). And, you've started to accrue parking tickets. You keep pulling them off the car and throwing them in the backseat, but, do nothing to rectify the fact you are still illegally parked. After a day of this and four tickets, the person issuing them decides you've obviously stated your intention to not move, and calls you in for a tow. You get towed. Because you left your windows down, they need covered in self-adhesive crash wrap to keep the elements out should it rain. You also didn't notice the car having been towed for an entire TWO days after it was, in fact, towed (well, two calender days, not two full 24 hour spans anyway).
So, by the time the tow, tickets, protection and storage fees are tallied up, you owe us, the envelope please......... *opens* $220.
You apparently believe you've done little to nothing wrong in all of this, so you naturally demand a discount.
Why?
Because if you don't get it you'll............ the envelope please..... *opens* Give us a bad review online.
Yeah, that was pretty much it.
If we don't charge you LESS than what we LEGALLY can for YOUR mistake.... you'll give our company a NEGATIVE review.
Go ahead, we haven't had a good laugh for a while, not since that last lady followed through with an identical threat and left a page-long screed on how we were all "incompetent half-wits" with "no functioning brain cells between us" and use "Illegal predatory tactics".
Said "review", by the way, is pinned up on our side of the front counter so we can point and laugh at it whenever we please, if you think you're good enough to dethrone it as the champ, well, hit us with your best shot.
That $220 ought to be motivation enough, and with me, grammar counts so be careful.
Father Knows Least
Our latest victim of a tow for no permit from California Ave Apts had some real comments and concerns about his tow when he came in to get his car.
He whined that he only parked where his son, a resident, told him to, and "he said nobody ever gets towed from here and half the cars don't even have permits"
Okay Pinocchio, lets take this one lie at a time, shall we?
Firstly, that's one of our biggest AND most active lots, with 6 multi-unit buildings and an easy 500 parking spaces. Furthermore, at only about 1/4 mile from the football stadium, you BET we check it during home games. Your son must spend a lot of time passed out drunk or glued to his Twitter feed if he never sees the constant flow of our trucks in and out of there. We've been towing from there for the entire six years I've been employed with Friendly Neighborhood Towing with no break in the action.
Secondly, there are NOT 250 cars over there with no permits. If there were, the owner of that property would have called us by now as they would have received a large number of complaints about nowhere to park by residents. I highly doubt you walked that entire lot and found even 5 that didn't have permits. Informing him of this made him do a rapid backpedal and revise his estimate to "50" which we told him was just as improbable, unlikely, and ultimately, irrelevant. HIS car didn't have a permitand he still owes. (and he was one of several brought in from that address today) If he wants us to tow cars without permits, he's got no beef, does he? Illegal parking is like speeding, we don't catch everyone, but, those we do catch cannot use that as leverage to get out of it, no matter how brilliant an idea that must seem to them.
The guy still thought it was all somehow unfair because, after all, his Son, who wouldn't lie, told him he could park there if he was just visiting. We told him that there's no such rule in the regulations for that lot, and if his kid told him otherwise, he obviously didn't read the rulebook about how to park his car over there.
"oh, he doesn't have a car" the guy says, "He gets rides from his friends, he just told me he thought you didn't need a permit to visit"
Uh huh
Look, I hate to point this out. Well, full disclosure, I LOVE to hate to have to point this out, but, well, you should probably ask someone who KNOWS what's going on if you want correct information about something.
You have a health problem? Make an appointment to ask the actual Doctor what's wrong, don't hang out around the doctor's office and ask the janitor what to do.... whatever they suggest probably won't cure you and will probably leave a nasty albeit piney-fresh chemical burn.
Delusions of Grandeur Theft Auto
-Don't I have to, like, show proof of ownership to get my car out?
-Nope, just payment and a photo ID
-So, just anyone can take my car?
-No, they'd have to give us ID, and, they'd have to have the key to drive it out of here too.
-So you're saying just anyone can walk in here and take my car!
*sigh*
No, that's not what we said at all. Listen carefully you self-important tinfoil hatter, what do you think is more likely if someone wants to steal your car?
A.They wait patiently and shadow you for days, maybe weeks, maybe MONTHS, tracking your moves and waiting for you to illegally park. They then furthermore wait for you to not only get illegally parked, but get towed, since there's no guarantee you won't move before someone calls you in and/or one of our trucks gets there. They then proceed to follow the truck to the impound, go inside the impound office where there are SECURITY CAMERAS aimed at the front desk, give us PHOTO ID with their name/address on it and we transcribe all that personal information on a copy of the paperwork WE KEEP. (granted, it COULD be fake, but, let's assume they've already gone through the trouble of creating a phoney ID just for this purpose) They then pay us anywhere between $115 to $300 depending on what you did illegal, and then have to go around back an either use a duplicate key for your car they somehow managed to sneakily create, or, break into and hotwire the car while additional security cameras and multiple employees of ours look on and do nothing....
B. They wait for you to park, throw a brick through the window, and drive off with it.
I'm no criminologist, but I'm willing to bet that car thieves don't like to work any harder to get results than any of the rest of us, and probably will select option "B" since that DOESN'T involve them having to PAY a 3rd party for the privilege of committing a felony, nor does it require standing for any time under CCTV camera scrutiny while in commission of said felony, nor that of multiple eyewitnesses, nor does it require them to compound their crime with additional crimes like forging and passing false documents. And though "A may sound like a great plot for a movie thriller, or a zany sitcom episode, I've never in all my years had that happen to us, nor heard of it happening to anyone else in our industry.
If you honestly think someone out there is willing to expend that kind of money/risk/effort to come after you, then you probably need to see your psychiatrist and have him up your lithium dosage, since you're still too paranoid for anyone's good, or just take your car home and blow it up, to keep it out of enemy hands.
By the way. If you get towed in Philly, you DO need to show a title and prove it's your car to get it back, and people bitch about that too, can't win for trying, so don't try.
The oft unheard-from executive branch of civic government around here has just upped the impound fees to $130 for a tow and $75 for a drop. Chew on THAT pacifier you big screamin' babies!Back to Civics Class for Ye!
99.9% of the public is in dire need of a quick afternoon seminar on the most ragged-edged basics of criminal and civil law in this country. That would cut down on the time they spend arguing "legal" points with me that are not only wrong, but sometimes don't even approach enough internal logical coherence to even be considered wrong in the first place.
Specifically you, good Sir. I am, of course, referencing your claim:
"You had NO right to tow my car! I did NOTHING illegal!"
It goes without saying that yes, yes we did have the right to tow you, since you DID in fact, park illegally, which by definition, is against the law.
You're just wrong, wrong, I'll say it again, W-R-O-N-G. As in not right, not right at all. NOTHING you said was correct.
It was so much concentrated wrong, you put us all in mortal danger. Should you have tacked on "and the sky is purple" at the end of your rant, it would have created an incorrectness singularity so massive and acute, it would have swallowed the whole neighborhood in a vortex of pure wrong, pushed it though the wrongness horizon inside, and shoved it out the other side where we'd find ourselves living in Whackyland amongst the Do-do birds..... A dody oh do do do do dody oh do do da do do do awhooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
Deep Doo-Doo
-I'm here to pick up my car
-What kind and from where?
-Black Ford, California Av Apartments
-Ah, yes we have that, it will be $115 cash or credit.
-Can I ask why I got towed? Because, I have a permit
-That permit was tampered, the dates were altered
-That's BULLS*IT!
...
...
...
Yes, yes it was. Forging a permit is a typical garbage-in-garbage-out setup. You get back what you put in. And when you put bullshite effort into it, you get back a big ol' steaming dump. Your "modifications" to what was once a legit permit were as subtle and smooth as if you had left a genuine cow pie on the dashboard for me to find instead.
Those were the WORST attempts to change the dates on a temp pass I've seen in a long time. I couldn't honestly tell what the ORIGINAL dates were nor your preferred alternates.
Near as I could tell that permit was good from "cryptic squiggle" to "jumbled scribble" and here we are at "disorganized scrawl" so it's expired anyway
Unless that's not what you meant, and if you meant something else was BS about all this, you didn't elaborate any further, you just gave me your credit card after your loud and unilateral denouncement of bovine fecal matter on me...
I like to think the fact the credit card machine went down AND the printer jammed twice trying to get you a receipt was either karma or some GENUINE bullshite for your enjoyment.
Either way, haw-haw.
Not Even Wrong
Guy at a rental property notes that an SUV has pulled into the alcove along the alley side of the building where the recycling bins are, blocking them in. Since this means the recycling truck can't get to them, (your 4 way flashers do not make you intangible, you're still blocking stuff wether you have them on or off) he calls us to remove the offender. We get about 90% of the way into removing him when he comes a runnin' out of the building.
"Woah! Woah! Comeon! I just stayed a bit too long!" the guy says.
That's not.... that's not even an excuse, that's just a declaration of fact. And you expect that to have any influence on the current situation? You seemed surprised it didn't. Angry even. So upset that you pulled out your wallet to pay, I presume, and then had a premature aggravation and THREW THE WALLET. You didn't even throw it at us... you... heaved it across the street. That's one way to do charity work, but not the most efficient by a long shot. You eventually calmed down enough to pay, and were generally polite, but, you seem to not understand the difference between EXPLANATION and JUSTIFICATION.
A precise explanation does not a valid excuse make
That's Called Blackmail, Honey
So, you've illegally parked at a parking meter (the illegality stemming from the fact that you didn't PAY it). And, you've started to accrue parking tickets. You keep pulling them off the car and throwing them in the backseat, but, do nothing to rectify the fact you are still illegally parked. After a day of this and four tickets, the person issuing them decides you've obviously stated your intention to not move, and calls you in for a tow. You get towed. Because you left your windows down, they need covered in self-adhesive crash wrap to keep the elements out should it rain. You also didn't notice the car having been towed for an entire TWO days after it was, in fact, towed (well, two calender days, not two full 24 hour spans anyway).
So, by the time the tow, tickets, protection and storage fees are tallied up, you owe us, the envelope please......... *opens* $220.
You apparently believe you've done little to nothing wrong in all of this, so you naturally demand a discount.
Why?
Because if you don't get it you'll............ the envelope please..... *opens* Give us a bad review online.
Yeah, that was pretty much it.
If we don't charge you LESS than what we LEGALLY can for YOUR mistake.... you'll give our company a NEGATIVE review.
Go ahead, we haven't had a good laugh for a while, not since that last lady followed through with an identical threat and left a page-long screed on how we were all "incompetent half-wits" with "no functioning brain cells between us" and use "Illegal predatory tactics".
Said "review", by the way, is pinned up on our side of the front counter so we can point and laugh at it whenever we please, if you think you're good enough to dethrone it as the champ, well, hit us with your best shot.
That $220 ought to be motivation enough, and with me, grammar counts so be careful.
Father Knows Least
Our latest victim of a tow for no permit from California Ave Apts had some real comments and concerns about his tow when he came in to get his car.
He whined that he only parked where his son, a resident, told him to, and "he said nobody ever gets towed from here and half the cars don't even have permits"
Okay Pinocchio, lets take this one lie at a time, shall we?
Firstly, that's one of our biggest AND most active lots, with 6 multi-unit buildings and an easy 500 parking spaces. Furthermore, at only about 1/4 mile from the football stadium, you BET we check it during home games. Your son must spend a lot of time passed out drunk or glued to his Twitter feed if he never sees the constant flow of our trucks in and out of there. We've been towing from there for the entire six years I've been employed with Friendly Neighborhood Towing with no break in the action.
Secondly, there are NOT 250 cars over there with no permits. If there were, the owner of that property would have called us by now as they would have received a large number of complaints about nowhere to park by residents. I highly doubt you walked that entire lot and found even 5 that didn't have permits. Informing him of this made him do a rapid backpedal and revise his estimate to "50" which we told him was just as improbable, unlikely, and ultimately, irrelevant. HIS car didn't have a permitand he still owes. (and he was one of several brought in from that address today) If he wants us to tow cars without permits, he's got no beef, does he? Illegal parking is like speeding, we don't catch everyone, but, those we do catch cannot use that as leverage to get out of it, no matter how brilliant an idea that must seem to them.
The guy still thought it was all somehow unfair because, after all, his Son, who wouldn't lie, told him he could park there if he was just visiting. We told him that there's no such rule in the regulations for that lot, and if his kid told him otherwise, he obviously didn't read the rulebook about how to park his car over there.
"oh, he doesn't have a car" the guy says, "He gets rides from his friends, he just told me he thought you didn't need a permit to visit"
Uh huh
Look, I hate to point this out. Well, full disclosure, I LOVE to hate to have to point this out, but, well, you should probably ask someone who KNOWS what's going on if you want correct information about something.
You have a health problem? Make an appointment to ask the actual Doctor what's wrong, don't hang out around the doctor's office and ask the janitor what to do.... whatever they suggest probably won't cure you and will probably leave a nasty albeit piney-fresh chemical burn.
Delusions of Grandeur Theft Auto
-Don't I have to, like, show proof of ownership to get my car out?
-Nope, just payment and a photo ID
-So, just anyone can take my car?
-No, they'd have to give us ID, and, they'd have to have the key to drive it out of here too.
-So you're saying just anyone can walk in here and take my car!
*sigh*
No, that's not what we said at all. Listen carefully you self-important tinfoil hatter, what do you think is more likely if someone wants to steal your car?
A.They wait patiently and shadow you for days, maybe weeks, maybe MONTHS, tracking your moves and waiting for you to illegally park. They then furthermore wait for you to not only get illegally parked, but get towed, since there's no guarantee you won't move before someone calls you in and/or one of our trucks gets there. They then proceed to follow the truck to the impound, go inside the impound office where there are SECURITY CAMERAS aimed at the front desk, give us PHOTO ID with their name/address on it and we transcribe all that personal information on a copy of the paperwork WE KEEP. (granted, it COULD be fake, but, let's assume they've already gone through the trouble of creating a phoney ID just for this purpose) They then pay us anywhere between $115 to $300 depending on what you did illegal, and then have to go around back an either use a duplicate key for your car they somehow managed to sneakily create, or, break into and hotwire the car while additional security cameras and multiple employees of ours look on and do nothing....
B. They wait for you to park, throw a brick through the window, and drive off with it.
I'm no criminologist, but I'm willing to bet that car thieves don't like to work any harder to get results than any of the rest of us, and probably will select option "B" since that DOESN'T involve them having to PAY a 3rd party for the privilege of committing a felony, nor does it require standing for any time under CCTV camera scrutiny while in commission of said felony, nor that of multiple eyewitnesses, nor does it require them to compound their crime with additional crimes like forging and passing false documents. And though "A may sound like a great plot for a movie thriller, or a zany sitcom episode, I've never in all my years had that happen to us, nor heard of it happening to anyone else in our industry.
If you honestly think someone out there is willing to expend that kind of money/risk/effort to come after you, then you probably need to see your psychiatrist and have him up your lithium dosage, since you're still too paranoid for anyone's good, or just take your car home and blow it up, to keep it out of enemy hands.
By the way. If you get towed in Philly, you DO need to show a title and prove it's your car to get it back, and people bitch about that too, can't win for trying, so don't try.
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