today was interesting to me for two reasons. one, i have learned that keeping to your principles may be more expensive than just doing what you're told. two, i have learned that some people are nothing but sacks of meat with the fist of authority rammed up their backsides to direct their responses.
allow me to elaborate, if you can stomach the bile.
first lesson was courtesy of Lambeth Parking Services (i'll shorten this to LPS). A while back I received notice of a parking ticket (penalty charge notice, or PCN, to the initiated) I had failed to pay. I had neither received a PCN nor parked the hired car in the place of the alleged contravention.
I wrote to LPS to contest the PCN, explaining that there must have been an error. A month or two afterwards, I received a notice of rejection, which kindly offered to extend the deadline for payment of the fine to the 18th of this month. The letter claimed to have a photograph, proving that the vehicle was in contravention in the stated location. Well, it wasn't there.
I called LPS to request the photograph and they sent it a few days later. Apart from some buildings in the background, there was nothing to place the vehicle or to indicate the regulations of the parking bay. It was indeed the vehicle I had been driving, however, but there was no date on the picture.
I called LPS again, to request a duplicate of the PCN. The "system was down". I used to think 'systems' were really crap before i found out that it was actually the morons using them that were at fault. Ahh, the heady days of youthful innocence. How I miss them... but i digress.
I called LPS again, this time during the week, mindful of the looming payment deadline (they charge you twice as much if you don't pay up in a timely fashion), only to receive the somehow-unexpected-yet-thoroughly-typical 'we're closed' message. I'm never home before 6 so it had to wait until this saturday, which will be yesterday by the time i finish this rant.
Anyhoo, I called LPS again. for those of you not keeping score, that's four calls and a letter and we're not done yet. The lovely operator told me the "system was down", _after_ taking my reference number, and then put me through to her colleague. At least, that's what she tried to do. I guess the phone system was down too.
Anyway, I called LPS again. I got through to a different operator, did I call the first one 'operator'? My mistake, what I meant to write was 'paperweight'. This lovely operator asked me why I hadn't requested the duplicate PCN in writing before assuring me that all i could do was 'fill in the appeal form' that came with my notice of rejection. okey dokey, i thought. I'll fill in the appeal form. I asked her to read the details of the PCN to me. While this was happening, I asked her if there was possibly a mistake on the PCN, as I had never been parked there. She asked me about when I had had the car, and together we confirmed that the PCN did indeed reflect the date and time when the car was in my possession.
I apologised sarcastically, saying that I must have forgotten parking there. Well obviously it was my fault - surely the parking attendants never write the dates on the PCN slips before giving them out!
Then I had a revelation. Nothing I could say or do would ever clear me of parking in that place at that time. The LPS had a record of a vehicle parked in contravention, with a photo to prove it. I simply had the conviction of my memory, and a good hard look at the actual place of contravention (just in case i really had forgotten), on my side.
The appeal is evaluated by an independent adjudicator and, should your appeal fail, you pay legal fees as well as the full PCN charge (double what I was liable for at that time).
I should have taken it further. I know that. It's the principle, right? But I didn't. I ponied up a cheque for the fifty quid, wrote an angry letter explaining the above, slapped a _first class_ stamp on it, and then sent it off.
Despite two letters, five phone calls, fifty quid and the compromise of my principles, I still have to live with the knowledge that some jobsworth parking attendant is going to fuck it up again, the system will stay down, and some other poor bastard will end up paying the fine incurred by a cheap arsehole who recognises the opportunity presented by an incorrectly completed PCN.
Whew! I should feel better, but I don't. Now, for lesson two. Still here? feeling the pain?
Tonight we went out to a bar where a friend was celebrating his birthday. I don't drink and I wasn't all that excited about the party - i get bored easily in bars. anyway, this is the kind of bar where the staff organise the drugs, the toilet attendant is better paid than you are and the coat check costs the price of a light meal. Some time after my lime and soda ran out, in between the furiously absent bouts of highbrow conversation, I became hungry and went out to sample some of Soho's finest late night cuisine.
Rack one up for today's blessings: the falafel in pita was very tasty and I was given autonomy over the chilli sauce.
When I came back five minutes later, the doorman refused to let me in.
"But I've just been in here. I'm with friends, and all my friends are inside", I whinged. The bouncer told me, in his thickest English, that I had had too much to drink, and reminded me that I wasn't allowed in. I stood gaping at him for a bit and then remembered the ace up my sleeve: "...but I was here just five minutes ago, and I've left my coat inside!" (bear in mind that it is January, we are in the northern hemisphere and, despite the recent mild weather, tonight is pretty cold).
The bouncer shook his head and enunciated "i don't remember you".
Inside my brain, the CUNT light came on, klaxons and all, but my sense of self-preservation prevailed and I walked away. I wrote a text explaining the situation to my wife, who was inside, and went across the road to get a coffee.
Now, while I was getting a coffee, I clocked one of our female friends talking to the bouncer, (read 'wanker') and went back over the road with my coffee.
She asked if I would come back in and I politely explained, given that the twat_mountain was next to me at this stage, that I would prefer not to and would she be so kind as to fetch my coat?
When I handed over the receipt for my coat, the meatloaf muttered "why you don't show me this one before?" to which I replied "why didn't you ask?" and then he offered to let me in, stipulating that i "finish my tea first".
By this time the light in my head had run out of words and was displaying an unrecognisable error signal.
Our friend went back inside and then my wife came out with the coat. I explained that I would prefer not to stay since I was bored stiff anyway. I think she understood that it was the principle of the matter that was important to me.
My lesson was this: a bouncer is a bouncer because of his brawn and not his brain.
You might think this an obvious conclusion, and you'd be right, but in this case someone had unfortunately invested enough authority, up his steroid-tightened rectum, to make decisions on the access control purely on the look of the clientele. I mean, I _know_ i had not had too many drinks... I had only had the one, a lime and soda.
So here's to you mr bouncer! long may you protect your pissing ground from rowdy elements such as me!
