I've spent the past 8.5 years in parking, and have seen many sides of campus parking solutions. The one that usually brings me an "instant bond" with our customers is the 2 years or so that I spent handling citation appeals.
Aside from being a key component of parking citation management, citation appeals can also provide a delightful source of entertainment. Whether it be the employee who threatened my life from the same "anonymous" email address he used to file his appeal, or the grad student who provided photographic evidence that there were no "No Parking" signs where he had left his vehicle. Granted, his vehicle was 20 feet back from the sidewalk next to the tree line, but he was technically correct.
My personal favorite is still one undergrad who didn't seem to grasp the notion that what she put in an email could come back to haunt her down the line. After offering up several creative activities I could perform upon myself with a BBQ fork, she then followed up by informing me that she had "broken more than her fair share of gate arms over the years" and inviting me to "just try and prove that!" So I hit reply, CCed the dean of students, and sent her the one-word reply of "Done." I miss those crazy kids sometimes.
I think that if I were still working in the operational side of campus parking solutions, I'd have to take advantage of some of the broader functionality offered by today's parking system software. Perhaps a custom field added to appeals records where you could rate them by the creativity of their appeal? Then, when I needed a little pick-me-up, I could run a query to find all my favorites.
I left those appeals behind when I came to T2, but I still have that grad student's picture on the wall above my desk. Just a little reminder that, no matter how delusional, those folks really did believe they were in a legal space. . .
Aside from being a key component of parking citation management, citation appeals can also provide a delightful source of entertainment. Whether it be the employee who threatened my life from the same "anonymous" email address he used to file his appeal, or the grad student who provided photographic evidence that there were no "No Parking" signs where he had left his vehicle. Granted, his vehicle was 20 feet back from the sidewalk next to the tree line, but he was technically correct.
My personal favorite is still one undergrad who didn't seem to grasp the notion that what she put in an email could come back to haunt her down the line. After offering up several creative activities I could perform upon myself with a BBQ fork, she then followed up by informing me that she had "broken more than her fair share of gate arms over the years" and inviting me to "just try and prove that!" So I hit reply, CCed the dean of students, and sent her the one-word reply of "Done." I miss those crazy kids sometimes.
I think that if I were still working in the operational side of campus parking solutions, I'd have to take advantage of some of the broader functionality offered by today's parking system software. Perhaps a custom field added to appeals records where you could rate them by the creativity of their appeal? Then, when I needed a little pick-me-up, I could run a query to find all my favorites.
I left those appeals behind when I came to T2, but I still have that grad student's picture on the wall above my desk. Just a little reminder that, no matter how delusional, those folks really did believe they were in a legal space. . .
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