The Parking Citation I Didn't Pay
Today's post is about some good luck I had today. No big lessons here or any profound thoughts of any sort, just a quick story. Enjoy.
If you've ever been to BYU campus, you'll know one thing: the parking police are ruthless. Leave your car parked in the wrong spot for five minutes, and you run the risk of getting a ticket or even getting your car booted. It's disgustingly impressive how efficient they are at cracking down on poorly placed vehicles.
I don't go to BYU, obviously, but I have many friends who do. I have a few friends specifically who (out of the goodness of their hearts) have invited me to stay in their dorm a few times and I have loved the chances I've had to hang out with them and stay down there. BYU isn't the school I'm planning on attending after my mission, but these times sure have been a blast.
So one time a couple weeks ago I went to stay with them. I headed down on a Sunday night, intending to come home sometime on Monday but not really planning too far ahead.
(This isn't really too important to the story I'm telling, but I'm gonna go off track for a quick second. On the Sunday night I went to this tunnel singing thing where a bunch of BYU students gather themselves together in this tunnel (probably for acoustics and such, maybe for warmth and close proximity I mean it is BYU) and sing hymns. As this whole activity was going on I did two things: met a kid who's going to the same mission I am and also made eye contact with the cutest girl like 4,000 times but was too afraid to talk to her. What I'm trying to say is this: Garrett Higgins, I can't wait to serve with you and Hannah Frank, I think you're adorable. That's all.)
Anyway. So I went to BYU this Sunday night, and stayed through to Monday. I didn't have any responsibilities at home to take care of on Monday so I went to a few classes with my friends and it was dope. Dropping into a class halfway through a semester meant everything went way over my head, but the experience was still really cool. Also one of my friends has a bowling class that I went to with him and I'm not claiming I'm his good luck charm or anything but he scored a 221 while I was there and he's never done that good before. So that was rad.
After all the classes and stuff and after my friends had done some studying and such, we were kind of just hanging out and I eventually decided that I would be staying with them another night (I was careful not to intrude on them, I asked them multiple times and they said it was okay). The only issue with this decision was where I should park my car.
The night before, I had parked my car in a parking lot that was fine for me, a visitor, to park in on weekends (Sunday night: good) but not during the week (Monday night: bad). However, I had driven one of my friends to class earlier in the day so my car was in a different visitor parking lot a little bit farther away from their dorm. It was still in this parking spot in this visitor parking lot, and one of my friends said it would probably be fine there overnight because he had checked and he said there were no signs saying I couldn't park there overnight. I chose to leave the car there, hoping for the best.
Wrong choice.
The next morning, I got up, had breakfast with another friend of mine (thanks Johanna!) and then made the short trek to my car, wishing that I would find the windshield free of any parking tickets. Unfortunately, my wish was not granted. I approached the car to find that I had been given a citation. The cause: parking in a lot where overnight parking was not permitted. The fine: $20.
A little annoyed, I drove home. It wasn't a big deal to get this ticket, but I still intended to submit an appeal because it wasn't clearly stated where I was that I couldn't park there and I found that a little bit unfair.
When I got home, I followed the instructions on the citation to begin the appeal process: go to BYU's parking website, select the "appeal a citation" option, and follow the directions from there. The way the system is set up is such that when you receive a citation it gives you a citation number to enter into their database in order to pay or appeal your citation. So I did that, but I received an error message saying that my citation couldn't be found.
That's weird, I thought.
So I tried again. I tried everything I could think of: all-caps, no caps, checking every possibility of whether the zero in my citation number was actually a letter "O". Nothing worked. It frustrated me that I had gotten this citation but it bothered me even more that the system wouldn't let me do anything about it. That seemed dumb.
I decided ultimately to let it go for right then. Maybe they hadn't entered my citation into their system yet or something so I would try again in a couple days.
I waited a few days and tried again. Same result.
BYU's citation policy states that all citations need to be paid or appealed within 14 calendar days of receiving the citation, and today was day 14 since I had gotten mine. So this morning I decided to call the BYU parking office, which I probably should have done a few days ago but never remembered to until the office was closed.
A girl answered the phone at the office and I explained the situation to her. She asked me to give her the citation number so I did so and then was placed on hold, listening to a famous piece of classical music while I waited (by famous I mean I recognized the piece but I couldn't name it. I'm not very good at remembering the names of pieces that don't have words in them to give me any hints about their titles).
The girl returned a couple minutes later and said that I had gotten lucky. Apparently, she explained, the machine that had been used to give me my ticket didn't function properly and so the ticket wasn't even in their system so I didn't have to pay it.
What luck!
So just as much as I had gotten annoyed with the ticket's assignment in the first place, I was equally happy that I ultimately didn't have to worry about it. I was pumped that a technological failure had covered my error and saved me a cool $20.
Like I said at the beginning, this post doesn't have a grand message or big, exciting lesson. Just a cool story of something that happened to me. Hope you didn't hate it.
I will see you tomorrow.
If you've ever been to BYU campus, you'll know one thing: the parking police are ruthless. Leave your car parked in the wrong spot for five minutes, and you run the risk of getting a ticket or even getting your car booted. It's disgustingly impressive how efficient they are at cracking down on poorly placed vehicles.
I don't go to BYU, obviously, but I have many friends who do. I have a few friends specifically who (out of the goodness of their hearts) have invited me to stay in their dorm a few times and I have loved the chances I've had to hang out with them and stay down there. BYU isn't the school I'm planning on attending after my mission, but these times sure have been a blast.
So one time a couple weeks ago I went to stay with them. I headed down on a Sunday night, intending to come home sometime on Monday but not really planning too far ahead.
(This isn't really too important to the story I'm telling, but I'm gonna go off track for a quick second. On the Sunday night I went to this tunnel singing thing where a bunch of BYU students gather themselves together in this tunnel (probably for acoustics and such, maybe for warmth and close proximity I mean it is BYU) and sing hymns. As this whole activity was going on I did two things: met a kid who's going to the same mission I am and also made eye contact with the cutest girl like 4,000 times but was too afraid to talk to her. What I'm trying to say is this: Garrett Higgins, I can't wait to serve with you and Hannah Frank, I think you're adorable. That's all.)
Anyway. So I went to BYU this Sunday night, and stayed through to Monday. I didn't have any responsibilities at home to take care of on Monday so I went to a few classes with my friends and it was dope. Dropping into a class halfway through a semester meant everything went way over my head, but the experience was still really cool. Also one of my friends has a bowling class that I went to with him and I'm not claiming I'm his good luck charm or anything but he scored a 221 while I was there and he's never done that good before. So that was rad.
After all the classes and stuff and after my friends had done some studying and such, we were kind of just hanging out and I eventually decided that I would be staying with them another night (I was careful not to intrude on them, I asked them multiple times and they said it was okay). The only issue with this decision was where I should park my car.
The night before, I had parked my car in a parking lot that was fine for me, a visitor, to park in on weekends (Sunday night: good) but not during the week (Monday night: bad). However, I had driven one of my friends to class earlier in the day so my car was in a different visitor parking lot a little bit farther away from their dorm. It was still in this parking spot in this visitor parking lot, and one of my friends said it would probably be fine there overnight because he had checked and he said there were no signs saying I couldn't park there overnight. I chose to leave the car there, hoping for the best.
Wrong choice.
The next morning, I got up, had breakfast with another friend of mine (thanks Johanna!) and then made the short trek to my car, wishing that I would find the windshield free of any parking tickets. Unfortunately, my wish was not granted. I approached the car to find that I had been given a citation. The cause: parking in a lot where overnight parking was not permitted. The fine: $20.
 |
| I could have imagined a better surprise to find on my car |
A little annoyed, I drove home. It wasn't a big deal to get this ticket, but I still intended to submit an appeal because it wasn't clearly stated where I was that I couldn't park there and I found that a little bit unfair.
When I got home, I followed the instructions on the citation to begin the appeal process: go to BYU's parking website, select the "appeal a citation" option, and follow the directions from there. The way the system is set up is such that when you receive a citation it gives you a citation number to enter into their database in order to pay or appeal your citation. So I did that, but I received an error message saying that my citation couldn't be found.
That's weird, I thought.
So I tried again. I tried everything I could think of: all-caps, no caps, checking every possibility of whether the zero in my citation number was actually a letter "O". Nothing worked. It frustrated me that I had gotten this citation but it bothered me even more that the system wouldn't let me do anything about it. That seemed dumb.
I decided ultimately to let it go for right then. Maybe they hadn't entered my citation into their system yet or something so I would try again in a couple days.
I waited a few days and tried again. Same result.
BYU's citation policy states that all citations need to be paid or appealed within 14 calendar days of receiving the citation, and today was day 14 since I had gotten mine. So this morning I decided to call the BYU parking office, which I probably should have done a few days ago but never remembered to until the office was closed.
A girl answered the phone at the office and I explained the situation to her. She asked me to give her the citation number so I did so and then was placed on hold, listening to a famous piece of classical music while I waited (by famous I mean I recognized the piece but I couldn't name it. I'm not very good at remembering the names of pieces that don't have words in them to give me any hints about their titles).
The girl returned a couple minutes later and said that I had gotten lucky. Apparently, she explained, the machine that had been used to give me my ticket didn't function properly and so the ticket wasn't even in their system so I didn't have to pay it.
What luck!
So just as much as I had gotten annoyed with the ticket's assignment in the first place, I was equally happy that I ultimately didn't have to worry about it. I was pumped that a technological failure had covered my error and saved me a cool $20.
Like I said at the beginning, this post doesn't have a grand message or big, exciting lesson. Just a cool story of something that happened to me. Hope you didn't hate it.
I will see you tomorrow.
