Complete Rant on the Incompetence and Uselessness of the Denver Parking Violations Bureau

Few things piss me off more than undeserved parking tickets.  So, if you share this particular annoyance, feel free to continue reading.  If a complete debacle of a system designed specifically just to drain the pocket of a law-abiding citizen who wants to have dinner with her husband away from her children one time in a hundred years does not bother you, then you'll probably want to stop reading right now.


Writing parking tickets is a job.  Seriously.  It is a job.  This amazes me.  If I had this job, I would feel completely worthless as a human being unless I happened to be doing something, anything to contribute to society.  Are these parking violation writers contributing to society at all?  Maybe.  Maybe 1 out of 100 (yes, I am completely making up this statistic) tickets they write are to actually move some jerk who parked in a handicap spot or move a double parked car or some idiot parked in a fire lane or some other safety hazard.  I get that.  I understand those violations, and if I were an idiot who happened to make the mistake of parking somewhere like that, I would learn my lesson, pay the fine, and move on. 


However, I am not one of these people who parks in handicap spots or the like, and I have a feeling that 99% of these tickets are written for people like me who park in parking spaces and pay (or attempt to pay) the meter the appropriate amount and arrive back to their car to find the poor sucker who has an almost completely worthless (adverbs and adjectives based completely on the previous made up statistic) career putting a ticket on their window.


The worst part is that even if I waste my time going to court for this, I will still pay a fine. And there is really nothing that I can do about it.  I will pay a fine that I do not deserve because the meter was clearly not working properly, ate my money and then I received a ticket when I had paid for more than the amount of time that I actually used.  I have already wasted my time writing a formal dispute (for which I did not receive a response, though there is a record of a response being sent).  And I will go downtown tomorrow and wait my turn with squirming children for however much time, and the thought will cross my mind, I should've just paid the original fine.  But that's not really the issue now, is it?  


The issue is that I expect to live in a society where I actually get what I pay for, and don't get ripped off by a corrupt system that is just out to make a buck.  Silly me.  I must be delusional.  I expect humans to operate intelligently and appropriately and respectfully.  I must be crazy.  I expect humans to act humanely? Call me young and idealistic, I guess, but I still expect people to treat each other appropriately.


I find this system completely unacceptable.  I have no idea what parking violation fines pay for, but whatever it is, I would gladly pay someone directly for my use of it instead of the waste of time, effort, and energy this has caused me.


And you know what else pisses me off?  It pisses me off that I am this angry about this and that makes me want to eat chocolate. And that counteracts the hour of running I did this morning.  I am afraid there is more than one Plumperton.