Assuming the Best: Parking Ticket

2 Peter 1:7 - "And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity."

Sometime last week, I was visiting a friend on the South side of campus. When I returned to my car, I discovered I had procured a parking ticket.

Lovely, I thought.

When I discussed this unfortunate turn of events with my direct supervisor later on in the day, he told me he thought the parking ticket was, in essence, placed on my car unlawfully. He directed me to my university's parking regulations page, on which I soon discovered he was correct. The wording of this document justifies my being parked there at that time, I reasoned.

So, when I had the chance, I went in to contend the citation. I first had to fill out a form explaining why I felt as though my ticket was unlawful. I accomplished this with a calm and respectful tone in my writing, specifically citing the article I had read to determine my innocence. 

Finally, after a short wait, I was ushered in to speak with the lady overseeing my case. I expected some sort of greeting or salutation, but despite the fact I was the only one in the office, the lady started barking at me before I'd even stepped all the way into the door. In the short conversation we had, I maintained a respectful and level tone, for which I was rewarded with belittling statements and a complete disregard for my well-crafted argument.

I was informed, right off the bat, that "nobody had ever come in to complain about this type of ticket, except for those who haven't read the parking regulations." This sentence was repeated several times, as if to accentuate how daft I was supposedly being, and was almost always in response to my direct quotations of the regulation document itself. In the end, despite my calm suggestions that the lady's interpretation of the cited regulation was not made explicitly clear in the document itself, she explained that the language was clear, and that I needed to do a better job 'studying it for next time.'

So, yes. In the end, it came down to the linguistics of the document. When I pointed this out, the lady informed me that she wasn't going to argue with me, and that, if I stopped, she would agree to lower the ticket's cost from twenty to ten dollars. I almost took the twenty dollars as a matter of principle, but, thinking about my next meal, sighed and agreed.

Really, though, if it came to it, I wouldn't have minded paying the whole twenty dollars. That wasn't the real problem I had with the entire exchange. I was frustrated because, first and foremost, I shouldn't have had to pay any money at all. Even if the lady's interpretation was the correct one, it should have been written in such a way that there wouldn't be a misunderstanding. Second, I was not respected despite my calm demeanor and my genuine concerns. 

From the get-go, that lady was raring for a fight. She expected me to come in swinging, and so swung at me first. 

In mulling the situation over, I feel like my frustrations would have been greatly mollified if I had been treated properly from the get-go. I honestly harbored no bitterness about the ticket itself, but now, I am still nursing a grudge against the lady, who I feel was inclined to treat me like dirt instead of like a person.

Sometimes I worry I come across this way to people. I get concerned if I notice I'm coming out swinging instead of beginning with the building blocks of mutual respect and trust. When I have experiences like the one I had at the parking ticket office, I take the opportunity to step back, reevaluate myself, and commit to not becoming that which I hate. And, then, of course, I write the experience down.

So I don't forget again.