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Oy, Enough With the Lawyers Already!
I wish I had been there for this one from start to finish, alas, I only walked in on the end as the the Towing Manager (TM) was finishing putting the final decorative flourishes on the smackdown he was giving to yet another junior lawyer-in-training who was absolutely certain threats of legal action would make us cave in like an unregulated coal mine.
Not that I needed to hear any of what preceded it, mind you, the good part is always the end.
I mean, does anyone really read The Three Little Pigs to watch the wolf blow down the house made of straw, and the house made of sticks? Heck no! They're only there to see him bash his skull raw trying to get into the one made of brick at the end, as our intrepid legal eagle (LE) was trying to do.....
LE- You can't charge me to get my car back if I'm going to dispute the charges, that's coercion!
TM- No, it's a fine, and you need to pay it before you get your car back, wether your lawyer gets involved or not.
LE- Well, they ARE getting involved! I need all documentation pertaining to this tow!
TM- You have it already, it's called your receipt, you'll get it when you pay, it'll show exactly when, how and why you got towed.
LE- No! I mean I need all the legal documentation you have that shows you can tow me! Because I'm taking you to court over this!
TM- *sigh* It's called title 75 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, you want a copy? Google it and print your own, I don't have any to hand out right now.
LE- I'm, not familiar with that
TM- You've never heard of the vehicles code before? Thought you said you were a lawyer.
LE- Well, my Dad's a lawyer.... uh.... but he's a real estate lawyer
... and ....
TM- Uh huh, well, if he wants to waste his time, that's fine, but, I'm warning you now, we've towed off-duty cops, a Judge, and a few people from the state Attorney General's office before, and all THOSE charges stuck, so good luck.
Darn, that sound you just heard was a massive balloon of an ego getting jabbed with a red-hot needle and exploding like that poor guy's head in Scanners.
Turns out our budding future bar member had neglected to put up the permit for his apartment in his car when he parked last night, and come the morning, the car was gone. He was quite miffed at this, apparently believing that towing a resident such as himself was illegal, even though it's in black-and-white in the rental contract: no permit? No parking.
Furthermore, we have no way of knowing who belongs otherwise. There is no list, there is no 24 hour 3rd party agency to call first and double-check that cars without permits may actually have one somewhere, if there was, that would defeat the entire purpose of handing out permits. They aren't for decoration, ya know.
Sorry, we're not psychic, if we were, we'd have reaped such a bounty from predicting stock market trends and real estate booms that we'd all be on a warm beach somewhere up to our armpits in margaritas and nubile members of the opposite sex, instead of eking out a living dealing with the likes of you all the time, good sir.
Determined to get in the last word, or last action, he tried to chirp the tires of his car in defiance as he left.
"Tried" being the optimal word.
Since he was driving a Prius, a vehicle directly-descended from a laboratory-induced mating between a roller skate and a slot car set, he didn't quite have the raw horsepower to pull it off. That, and he probably had the computerized traction control enabled as well. All he succeeded in doing by mashing the accelerator was moving maybe one of the little gravel pebbles in the back lot 2 inches further from the equator than it was earlier this morning.
Charming, isn't he?
Tis' But a Scratch!
Lady comes in to pick up her Lexus that we towed for illegal parking, comes into the impound lot that is, since she paid for it. No sooner does she walk up to it then she starts doing that thing..... that thing I hate.... you know....
She starts frowning, and scowling, and circling the car like a hungry wolf stalking a wounded deer, waiting for the chance to go in for the kill..... I've seen this piece of performance art before, seen that posture, those gesticulations, too many times....
here comes the damage complaint in 3..... 2..... 1.....
-Excuse me! But you scratched my car!
Spitzilla, the driver closest to her decided to humor her and goes over to chat.
"Where?" he asks.
"Right HERE!" she says, pointing to a swirl of dust/dirt on the corner of her bumper.
"That's just dirt" Spitzilla says
"NO! It's a scratch!" she insists, Spitzilla tries not to laugh.
"Ma'm, that's just a dirt smear, here, watch, it'll rub right off"
"NO! Don't you touch that!" she orders, shocking Sptiz just a bit
"Okay, fine" he says, you don't want me to touch it, I won't touch it.
"Well? Who do I see about getting this fixed?"
"It doesn't NEED fixed, it's dirt, it will just rub off with a cloth."
"No! It's a scratch!"
"It's just a dirt smear, here, watch, it'll just come off if I touch it with my fing...."
"DON'T TOUCH MY CAR! I need a specialist to look at this!"
What is this? Professional courtesy? Professional pests only talk to professional managers?
And sorry, there's no filth specialist around here. Well, maybe Carl in the bodyshop, but other than him.... (sorry Carl, I luv ya, really!)
Not sure how that got resolved, I had a call to leave on, but she was gone when I got back.
Maybe someone rubbed HER out.
More likely, they got the bodyshop manager to come back, look at it, say "It's dirt" and she'd have to accept it coming from the mouth of a "professional".
Wave Bye-Bye, Chump
At first this was just going to be the tale of another person who left a note instead of a permit behind.
It said "This car is LEGALLY parked! Call Office for info"
What office? You didn't leave a number, not that it mattered, we DO NOT call the office for info, that would defeat the whole purpose of them handing out permits or the rare times they do call us with some kind of super secret probation this-car-is-okay-just-for-tonight-but-don't-blab-about-it kinda of a deal.
Figured I'd get the whole story eventually.
Day goes by...
Week goes by...
Now, 10 days after the tow, the owner finally did come by, and boy was he mad and got into it pretty loud with Towing Manager.
O - I don't know why I got towed, I left a note
TM- It really doesn't matter what that note says, it's not a permit and you need a permit for that lot.
O- But it said to call the office and they'd vouch for me! I bought parking from them, I just lost my permit!
TM- Yes, that's all it said "have permit call office", no name, no phone number, if that's all it took, I could write that on a piece of paper and park anywhere I want. That's why you need to put up a VALID permit and nothing else is accepted.
O- But they were sending me one, the office told me they would overnight it to me!
TM- So, why did you wait for a week and half before coming to get the car if you had a permit the next day?
O- Well, I tried to get it back, but nobody was here!
TM- If you came by after hours, nobody would be at the front door, you'd have to call the number on the door for someone to come up and unlock it for you. You didn't call did you?
O- Well, no, but, this, this is just rediculous, I can't afford to pay this! Now, there is CLEARLY something you can do, I am NOT paying for this bulls*it week of storage!
TM- No, no there isn't, you owe the same as anyone else who illegally parks. If anything, the only break you'll get is that we held these fees at the old rate, it's since gone up, and we're honoring the old storage rates when we could charge you several days at the higher rate.
O But they told me there would be no storage!
TM- Who?
O- They did!
TM- Who's they?
O- The people I talked to at the office.
TM- If you mean this office, nobody would have said that, we always charge storage, every tow company does, if the rental office told you that, they were mistaken, and they have no authority to set our prices or override them.
O- This is bull*hit, I was told there would be no extra fees!
TM- Yeah, that's right, it's all BS. Look, I already explained whoever told you that was wrong or not part of this company, that's it, you can pay or you can leave. I don't have time to argue with you.
O- So this is what you do all day? You F*CK over poor college kids?!
TM- You wanna leave now?
O- What do you mean leave?
TM- I have paying customers in here who shouldn't have to listen to this, now leave and don't come back until 6. According to this paperwork, your car was towed at 6:08pm last Friday, so, you won't be charged an extra day of storage until 6:08pm today. The price will stay right where it is, so leave and come back at 6, and we'll deal with you then.
Towing manager is usually quite the abuse sponge, he'll smile and laugh and sometimes wave at people who insult him and demean him, or try to pump up their own credentials and claim it makes them exempt from traffic law, but, there's no faster way to get chucked out onto the sidewalk than to use profanity or get caught in a lie (or at very least not keep a straight story).
As this, ahem, gentlemen, just learned.
It's starting to get pretty chilly out there too, so you probably don't want to risk saying the wrong words in front of him for the next 5 or so months. You may not LIKE having to un-impound your car, but it beats walking across the frozen tundra.
He's Movin' In, I Must be Moving On
Here's the stat line on our latest contestant, he's 3 for 4 with 2 tows and 1 drop in the last 3 weeks for illegally parking at the SAME apartment complex without a permit.
The real amazing thing is that he keeps trying the same excuse over and over and over again, oblivious that he's already tried it before, sometimes on the same person, as little as 3 days prior, and it just, doesn't work....
Every time
EVERY
SINGLE
TIME
We pick up the car, and he comes running out of the apartment saying "I'm just moving in!"
EVERY SINGLE TIME
And we tell him "You need a permit to park here"
"But I'm moving in!" he says... but never has an explanation why, if he's a resident or soon-to-be-resident, the office hasn't given him a permit.
And he never GETS a permit.
Within 48 hours, he's back in the same lot, same spot, and we play the game all over again.
And, wether we get a drop, or tow it all the way back to the shop before he realizes it's gone, he always says "But I'm moving in!"
The latest was when he parked DIRECTLY in front of a FIRE LANE - TOW ZONE sign, apparently thinking that maybe if he wasn't IN a space, he couldn't be towed for taking a space without a permit? Spoiler: It didn't work
And, of course, as we were hooking up his car, for being in the fire lane, so close to the FIRE LANE sign that it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for any passengers in the car to exit it without folding their door in half across the metal POST holding up the sign, while we were collecting the drop fees, what do you think he said?
Yup.
But I'm just moving in!
Insanity IS doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it would appear.
That boy, I say, that boy is like putting a worm in a kindergarten class, there just ain't no learnin'
And even weirder, move in was four weeks ago, FOUR, and it's always just his car parked there. There's never any luggage in it, personal possessions, laundry, small appliances, anything you'd bring with you if you were trying to move in some place, and never any Uhaul or Penske truck around either. His story, even if it WAS true, doesn't match the evidence, so he's apparently trying really really REALLY hard to make us believe an patent untruth and just cannot accept that we don't buy it, we have to! It's just THAT good! No matter, next time, ,he'll try even HARDER to make us believe it! And then, some day, some wonderful day.... we'll finally agree with him!
Unless
Unless...........
I wonder if I just pull back the blinds and look inside that apartment, will I see a bunch of pulsating, green, alien-looking seed pods? Ones that occasionally open up and spit out the same guy, who just says "I'm moving in.... I'm moving in.... I'm moving in...."?
Oh my God....
OH MY GOD!!
RUN FOR THE HILLS FOLKS! RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!! WE CAN'T RISK IT BEING TRUE!!!!!!!! RENDEZVOUS AT THE BUNKER AT 0600! AND BRING THE BOTTLED WATER!!!
I wish I had been there for this one from start to finish, alas, I only walked in on the end as the the Towing Manager (TM) was finishing putting the final decorative flourishes on the smackdown he was giving to yet another junior lawyer-in-training who was absolutely certain threats of legal action would make us cave in like an unregulated coal mine.
Not that I needed to hear any of what preceded it, mind you, the good part is always the end.
I mean, does anyone really read The Three Little Pigs to watch the wolf blow down the house made of straw, and the house made of sticks? Heck no! They're only there to see him bash his skull raw trying to get into the one made of brick at the end, as our intrepid legal eagle (LE) was trying to do.....
LE- You can't charge me to get my car back if I'm going to dispute the charges, that's coercion!
TM- No, it's a fine, and you need to pay it before you get your car back, wether your lawyer gets involved or not.
LE- Well, they ARE getting involved! I need all documentation pertaining to this tow!
TM- You have it already, it's called your receipt, you'll get it when you pay, it'll show exactly when, how and why you got towed.
LE- No! I mean I need all the legal documentation you have that shows you can tow me! Because I'm taking you to court over this!
TM- *sigh* It's called title 75 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, you want a copy? Google it and print your own, I don't have any to hand out right now.
LE- I'm, not familiar with that
TM- You've never heard of the vehicles code before? Thought you said you were a lawyer.
LE- Well, my Dad's a lawyer.... uh.... but he's a real estate lawyer
... and ....TM- Uh huh, well, if he wants to waste his time, that's fine, but, I'm warning you now, we've towed off-duty cops, a Judge, and a few people from the state Attorney General's office before, and all THOSE charges stuck, so good luck.
Darn, that sound you just heard was a massive balloon of an ego getting jabbed with a red-hot needle and exploding like that poor guy's head in Scanners.
Turns out our budding future bar member had neglected to put up the permit for his apartment in his car when he parked last night, and come the morning, the car was gone. He was quite miffed at this, apparently believing that towing a resident such as himself was illegal, even though it's in black-and-white in the rental contract: no permit? No parking.
Furthermore, we have no way of knowing who belongs otherwise. There is no list, there is no 24 hour 3rd party agency to call first and double-check that cars without permits may actually have one somewhere, if there was, that would defeat the entire purpose of handing out permits. They aren't for decoration, ya know.
Sorry, we're not psychic, if we were, we'd have reaped such a bounty from predicting stock market trends and real estate booms that we'd all be on a warm beach somewhere up to our armpits in margaritas and nubile members of the opposite sex, instead of eking out a living dealing with the likes of you all the time, good sir.
Determined to get in the last word, or last action, he tried to chirp the tires of his car in defiance as he left.
"Tried" being the optimal word.
Since he was driving a Prius, a vehicle directly-descended from a laboratory-induced mating between a roller skate and a slot car set, he didn't quite have the raw horsepower to pull it off. That, and he probably had the computerized traction control enabled as well. All he succeeded in doing by mashing the accelerator was moving maybe one of the little gravel pebbles in the back lot 2 inches further from the equator than it was earlier this morning.
Charming, isn't he?
Tis' But a Scratch!
Lady comes in to pick up her Lexus that we towed for illegal parking, comes into the impound lot that is, since she paid for it. No sooner does she walk up to it then she starts doing that thing..... that thing I hate.... you know....
She starts frowning, and scowling, and circling the car like a hungry wolf stalking a wounded deer, waiting for the chance to go in for the kill..... I've seen this piece of performance art before, seen that posture, those gesticulations, too many times....
here comes the damage complaint in 3..... 2..... 1.....
-Excuse me! But you scratched my car!
Spitzilla, the driver closest to her decided to humor her and goes over to chat.
"Where?" he asks.
"Right HERE!" she says, pointing to a swirl of dust/dirt on the corner of her bumper.
"That's just dirt" Spitzilla says
"NO! It's a scratch!" she insists, Spitzilla tries not to laugh.
"Ma'm, that's just a dirt smear, here, watch, it'll rub right off"
"NO! Don't you touch that!" she orders, shocking Sptiz just a bit
"Okay, fine" he says, you don't want me to touch it, I won't touch it.
"Well? Who do I see about getting this fixed?"
"It doesn't NEED fixed, it's dirt, it will just rub off with a cloth."
"No! It's a scratch!"
"It's just a dirt smear, here, watch, it'll just come off if I touch it with my fing...."
"DON'T TOUCH MY CAR! I need a specialist to look at this!"
What is this? Professional courtesy? Professional pests only talk to professional managers?
And sorry, there's no filth specialist around here. Well, maybe Carl in the bodyshop, but other than him.... (sorry Carl, I luv ya, really!)
Not sure how that got resolved, I had a call to leave on, but she was gone when I got back.
Maybe someone rubbed HER out.
More likely, they got the bodyshop manager to come back, look at it, say "It's dirt" and she'd have to accept it coming from the mouth of a "professional".
Wave Bye-Bye, Chump
At first this was just going to be the tale of another person who left a note instead of a permit behind.
It said "This car is LEGALLY parked! Call Office for info"
What office? You didn't leave a number, not that it mattered, we DO NOT call the office for info, that would defeat the whole purpose of them handing out permits or the rare times they do call us with some kind of super secret probation this-car-is-okay-just-for-tonight-but-don't-blab-about-it kinda of a deal.
Figured I'd get the whole story eventually.
Day goes by...
Week goes by...
Now, 10 days after the tow, the owner finally did come by, and boy was he mad and got into it pretty loud with Towing Manager.
O - I don't know why I got towed, I left a note
TM- It really doesn't matter what that note says, it's not a permit and you need a permit for that lot.
O- But it said to call the office and they'd vouch for me! I bought parking from them, I just lost my permit!
TM- Yes, that's all it said "have permit call office", no name, no phone number, if that's all it took, I could write that on a piece of paper and park anywhere I want. That's why you need to put up a VALID permit and nothing else is accepted.
O- But they were sending me one, the office told me they would overnight it to me!
TM- So, why did you wait for a week and half before coming to get the car if you had a permit the next day?
O- Well, I tried to get it back, but nobody was here!
TM- If you came by after hours, nobody would be at the front door, you'd have to call the number on the door for someone to come up and unlock it for you. You didn't call did you?
O- Well, no, but, this, this is just rediculous, I can't afford to pay this! Now, there is CLEARLY something you can do, I am NOT paying for this bulls*it week of storage!
TM- No, no there isn't, you owe the same as anyone else who illegally parks. If anything, the only break you'll get is that we held these fees at the old rate, it's since gone up, and we're honoring the old storage rates when we could charge you several days at the higher rate.
O But they told me there would be no storage!
TM- Who?
O- They did!
TM- Who's they?
O- The people I talked to at the office.
TM- If you mean this office, nobody would have said that, we always charge storage, every tow company does, if the rental office told you that, they were mistaken, and they have no authority to set our prices or override them.
O- This is bull*hit, I was told there would be no extra fees!
TM- Yeah, that's right, it's all BS. Look, I already explained whoever told you that was wrong or not part of this company, that's it, you can pay or you can leave. I don't have time to argue with you.
O- So this is what you do all day? You F*CK over poor college kids?!
TM- You wanna leave now?
O- What do you mean leave?
TM- I have paying customers in here who shouldn't have to listen to this, now leave and don't come back until 6. According to this paperwork, your car was towed at 6:08pm last Friday, so, you won't be charged an extra day of storage until 6:08pm today. The price will stay right where it is, so leave and come back at 6, and we'll deal with you then.
Towing manager is usually quite the abuse sponge, he'll smile and laugh and sometimes wave at people who insult him and demean him, or try to pump up their own credentials and claim it makes them exempt from traffic law, but, there's no faster way to get chucked out onto the sidewalk than to use profanity or get caught in a lie (or at very least not keep a straight story).
As this, ahem, gentlemen, just learned.
It's starting to get pretty chilly out there too, so you probably don't want to risk saying the wrong words in front of him for the next 5 or so months. You may not LIKE having to un-impound your car, but it beats walking across the frozen tundra.
He's Movin' In, I Must be Moving On
Here's the stat line on our latest contestant, he's 3 for 4 with 2 tows and 1 drop in the last 3 weeks for illegally parking at the SAME apartment complex without a permit.
The real amazing thing is that he keeps trying the same excuse over and over and over again, oblivious that he's already tried it before, sometimes on the same person, as little as 3 days prior, and it just, doesn't work....
Every time
EVERY
SINGLE
TIME
We pick up the car, and he comes running out of the apartment saying "I'm just moving in!"
EVERY SINGLE TIME
And we tell him "You need a permit to park here"
"But I'm moving in!" he says... but never has an explanation why, if he's a resident or soon-to-be-resident, the office hasn't given him a permit.
And he never GETS a permit.
Within 48 hours, he's back in the same lot, same spot, and we play the game all over again.
And, wether we get a drop, or tow it all the way back to the shop before he realizes it's gone, he always says "But I'm moving in!"
The latest was when he parked DIRECTLY in front of a FIRE LANE - TOW ZONE sign, apparently thinking that maybe if he wasn't IN a space, he couldn't be towed for taking a space without a permit? Spoiler: It didn't work
And, of course, as we were hooking up his car, for being in the fire lane, so close to the FIRE LANE sign that it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for any passengers in the car to exit it without folding their door in half across the metal POST holding up the sign, while we were collecting the drop fees, what do you think he said?
Yup.
But I'm just moving in!
Insanity IS doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it would appear.
That boy, I say, that boy is like putting a worm in a kindergarten class, there just ain't no learnin'
And even weirder, move in was four weeks ago, FOUR, and it's always just his car parked there. There's never any luggage in it, personal possessions, laundry, small appliances, anything you'd bring with you if you were trying to move in some place, and never any Uhaul or Penske truck around either. His story, even if it WAS true, doesn't match the evidence, so he's apparently trying really really REALLY hard to make us believe an patent untruth and just cannot accept that we don't buy it, we have to! It's just THAT good! No matter, next time, ,he'll try even HARDER to make us believe it! And then, some day, some wonderful day.... we'll finally agree with him!
Unless
Unless...........
I wonder if I just pull back the blinds and look inside that apartment, will I see a bunch of pulsating, green, alien-looking seed pods? Ones that occasionally open up and spit out the same guy, who just says "I'm moving in.... I'm moving in.... I'm moving in...."?
Oh my God....
OH MY GOD!!
RUN FOR THE HILLS FOLKS! RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!! WE CAN'T RISK IT BEING TRUE!!!!!!!! RENDEZVOUS AT THE BUNKER AT 0600! AND BRING THE BOTTLED WATER!!!
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