The Tow Files: Expired Extras

[Jester]

I was once a college student. And I occasionally ran afoul of some trouble, including stupidly getting car towed once when I parked in a retail lot next to the school that had plenty of signs saying that parking was for customers of the retail stores for that lot only, and that others would be towed. Including, of course, college students parking there to go to campus.

My mother is a nervous little old lady. Not just because she's 80, but because she's just about always been a nervous little old lady. And I'm gonna channel that nervous little old lady that raised me so I can tell you what she'd say to some of the reasons that girl and her mother raised for not being towed, if I had tried to use them when telling her about my own tale of car-towing woe.

Why, don't we understand her widdlekins is just a poor poor college age girl?

MOM: "You're an adult now, aren't you? Time to act like one and deal with this."

And don't we know how UNFIAR It is to just tow her from some place she LIVES?!???

MOM: "Did the complex require parking permits? They did? Deal with it."

And don't we know how UNFAIR it is to expect her to have to follow the rules she signed her name to on the lease?

MOM: "Did it not say in the lease something about parking permits? It did? Then deal with it."

And don't we know how UNFAIR it is to tow someone for a permit that's only TWO WEEKS expired???

MOM: "Wait, it was expired? For two weeks? And you didn't deal with it? Well, now you're gonna have to."

Not just that, but, she admits her kid had a permit for a couple weeks now but just never bothered to put it up in the car over the new one.

MOM: "Wait, you HAD the right permit for two weeks and you didn't bother putting it I your car? Well, just whose fault was that? Deal with it."

You might notice a theme here. My mom, when handed any of this idiocy, would have said, in her very polite, curse-free, nervous little old lady way, "Tough titties, jackass. You caused this shit on your own, you're gonna fucking fix this shit on your own." (As I said, she's politer than me.)

Or she would have uttered these classic words, as she often did with me and my sisters when we'd fuck up:

"Consider this a valuable learning experience"

As I said, these are the things my my mother would have said to me in such a situation. I can't tell you what she DID say when I actually DID get towed, because I wasn't fucking stupid enough to tell her about it.

I just dealt with it.

[sstabeler]

yeah, I can see giving a couple days grace on an expired permit- particularly if a weekend was involved- to not tow people who had simply forgotten to grab the new permit off the kitchen table when they next used the car after the old one expired- and also so you aren't towing cars where the permit expired overnight, and said person simply hadn't woken up yet to switch over the permits- or to cover situations where the vehicle owner hadn't been able to get a new permit yet (that's more something for the lot owner to handle, granted) but NOT two weeks.


Incidentally- and this is a hypothetical i just thought of- what would happen if you found a car with no permit, but it looked like the car had been broken into, and so it may have had a permit, and said permit been stolen? Would that have been a matter for the lot owner?

[greek_jester]

...so you aren't towing cars where the permit expired overnight, and said person simply hadn't woken up yet to switch over the permits

Sorry, that's where you display BOTH permits overnight and dump the expired one when you get to the car the next morning.

Then again, I used to paperclip my new tax disk to my keys the night before the old one expired (or prop it against the kettle if it was a weekend).

[wolfie]

"It doesn't say WHO they're reserved FOR, I thought that meant I could use them"

That guy is probably going to join the Army - and get his ass chewed for opening doors marked with the highest rank he'll ever achieve.