(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)
Flashing red half-moons excite me. Whenever I spot them atop park meters, I know I’ll soon have another notch in my belt. I am, amongst other things, a meter attendant and have been for five years. In general, I do not care for my job. Still, I try to make the most of it since I have to work more than a third of my waking hours. I accomplish this in large part by making a game out of ticket writing. Every day I try to beat my all-time record of 42 tickets in eight hours. None of the others currently on staff have gotten above 30.
Two years ago, my fair city—due to widespread backlogs, decided to no longer observe Labor Day as a holiday. The campaign to inform the citizenry that all governmental offices, including my own, was lethargic. After a coin-flipping tournament, I, the loser, was the only attendant not permitted to call in sick or schedule a vacation day. This was a blessing in disguise as the citizens of my fair city overwhelmingly neglected to feed the meters under the presumption that even we had the day off. The day proved to be a boon for revenue as well as governmental productivity and I was rewarded with an improved parking spot for my valiant effort. For the two days that followed, however, my numbers were down due to sore feet and a painful callus on my left hand.
To say mine is a thankless job would be overstating the case. Once I was thanked by the irate companion of the owner of a baby blue sedan. She called over to me while I was inspecting meters across the street. She excitedly explained that the owner was with “her” and had been in a nearby building for over an hour. She thanked me profusely as she sat on the hood and invited me to come back later in the day, referencing the car’s immanent inability to be driven. Not wanting to encourage rash behavior, I made no promise about returning. She accepted my declination with grace. I left wondering what she would do to the owner when he returned with his tie askew and hair tussled.
Even if it was convenient for me to go through that part of town, I would not have. There is an unwritten code amongst attendants never to write a ticket for the same car twice in one day. It is the only exception I make regarding the writing of tickets. Some years ago, an attendant was walking away from a car he had ticketed in the morning in another part of town when he was shot in the back of the head without warning by the livid driver. I don’t know if the story is true or apocryphal, but I think it is frighteningly feasible.
People feel liberated to act differently when they are dealing with an employee rather than a stranger the meet who’s off the clock. When you have a name tag, you have a role. When you have a role, you receive all the scorn aroused by the playwright. The relationship is regulated by different rules than those binding other social interactions. There’s no more need for decorum, tact, or politeness with an employee than there is with a coffee maker. If you met a person who yelled at you earlier in the day while you were wearing a uniform at a crosswalk later in the day and you called him on it, I suspect he’d say something like, “No hard feelings. That was just business.” I suspect he truly believed as much, too. Let me tell you, though, putting a dress on a doll doesn’t make it a different doll and putting a person doesn’t make her a different kind of being.
What I loathe most about this circumstance is that, since you’re forced into being a player, you find yourself needed to play by different rules than those that are ethically legitimate. When I first started being threatened, cursed at, and (occasionally) spat upon—which is to say when I first started this job—I tried to talk with the angry people who came upon me writing a ticket or walking away from writing one. Regrettably, I was never able to talk them down. They’d just keep on threatening, cursing, an (occasionally) spat upon. The only hope I had in being treated kindly was during the moment I was just beginning to take my pen out of my pocket. Then people were quite warm to me. I remember one such incident where a man came upon me flipping my book to a fresh page. He said, “Hey, boss man, hey, I like your shoes. You don’t have to do that do ya?” When I kept writing, he said in an unsettingly frank matter, “I ought to break your mother-fucking neck.” I didn’t respond, though I did have to re-write the license number as I jerked the pen whilst writing. That seems to be the best strategy, though, not responding to people, but—as we are playing a game—I cannot. Meaning is lost whenever I try to talk with them. If they can manage to listen, they look at me with frustration as though saying, “I don’t speak meter-maid.”
I would not go so far as to say my job is dehumanizing. Everyone has bills to pay and most of us have to pay them for ourselves. Being in need and attempting to get yourself out of it is very human. I suggest people—those people who insist upon playing this game—are the ones dehumaniazing, not occupations. I assume those same people are less than amicable in their private relationships too, but that is conjecture on my part.
I know that I am setting myself up for a charge of hypocrisy. I make a living making people pay substantial amounts of money for making minor transgressions. I initiate a process that could lead to less bread on the table. I am not interested in validating the laws of this place. Let me defend myself in by asserting I have never written someone up without seeing a flashing red half-moon. I simply enforce the laws of my city. If you think them unfair, then please stop coming here. If you cannot stop coming here, then please drop in an extra quarter and save yourself the trouble. Though I may play a game with myself, I umpire the game you all play with the powers-that-be. You cannot justly blame the umpire for your poor pitching, if I may use the image. I would not go so far as to assert that breaking a municipal law is a sin, but it is analogous. The entities who have the authority to supervise you must abide by the state rules, otherwise confusion and error would reign and chaos would trample order.
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