The Upper East Side of New York City in Manhattan is where I have been delivering packages for UPS for the last 5 years.
I deliver packages on Park Ave and beautiful 5th Ave by Central Park (where some residents pay as much as $30,000/month to live). I deliver packages to many of the rich and famous including Woody Allen, Michael J Fox, Paul Newman, Katie Couric and many others, including the Mayor himself... Mike Bloomberg..
Manhattan is a small island with 8 million residents and it seems like just as many cars. There is literally no place to legally park so I have to double park. I quickly run into the building, deliver the package and get back to the truck before I get a parking ticket.
My job is to deliver our premium early morning packages. Generally there are just a couple packages per building and the doorman signs for the packages so I’m not blocking traffic and not double parked for more than a minute or so. It’s run in and out of the building and back to the truck, quick like a ninja.
Usually, I didn’t get many parking tickets, maybe one or two per month. Sometimes I might go as long as two months without a single parking ticket. And I never got tickets when I worked on a Saturday.
But about 2 years age, that began to change. Instead of one or two parking tickets a month, I started getting one or two or three a week. Over the last year that has now escalated to one or two tickets per day and instead of no tickets on Saturday, I get a ticket EVERY Saturday. Same route, same streets, same time - The only variable is the amount of tickets.
However, this past Friday, I hit a new record high (or record low depending on your point of view). 5 parking tickets in 1 hour. FIVE! ...In One Hour! ...Written by 5 different traffic cops. (And at $115 bucks a pop, that ain’t cheap).
Here's what happened. I returned to my truck within 2 minutes of double parking it, and there was a traffic violations specialist, in the middle of writing my third parking ticket for that day. The traffic cop writing me this ticket, writes me a ticket just about every day, same time - same place.
When he saw me coming he said to me “I love seeing UPS trucks. It’s an easy ticket to write because you guys don’t argue with us and give us a hard time”.
I move on and continue delivering packages. About 10 minutes later, I come out a building and there is a female cop writing me ticket #4. I pick up the other 3 tickets, show her and say to her, “This is a new record, 4 tickets in less than an hour”.
She apologetically says to me, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You should have said something. Or you should have at least put the tickets on the front of the truck so we could see them”. I said “Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll try that”.
So I go to the next stop, but this time I have the 4 tickets visibly displayed on the front of the truck, tucked in by the windshield. I exit the building and to my suprise, another traffic violations specialist is writing me ticket #5.
I guess he didn’t want anyone to see how many tickets I had, so he picked up the other 4 tickets and folded them all together along with ticket #5, so it only looked like one ticket. C’mon Mayor Bloomberg - Give UPS a break!
I deliver packages on Park Ave and beautiful 5th Ave by Central Park (where some residents pay as much as $30,000/month to live). I deliver packages to many of the rich and famous including Woody Allen, Michael J Fox, Paul Newman, Katie Couric and many others, including the Mayor himself... Mike Bloomberg..
Manhattan is a small island with 8 million residents and it seems like just as many cars. There is literally no place to legally park so I have to double park. I quickly run into the building, deliver the package and get back to the truck before I get a parking ticket.
My job is to deliver our premium early morning packages. Generally there are just a couple packages per building and the doorman signs for the packages so I’m not blocking traffic and not double parked for more than a minute or so. It’s run in and out of the building and back to the truck, quick like a ninja.
Usually, I didn’t get many parking tickets, maybe one or two per month. Sometimes I might go as long as two months without a single parking ticket. And I never got tickets when I worked on a Saturday.
But about 2 years age, that began to change. Instead of one or two parking tickets a month, I started getting one or two or three a week. Over the last year that has now escalated to one or two tickets per day and instead of no tickets on Saturday, I get a ticket EVERY Saturday. Same route, same streets, same time - The only variable is the amount of tickets.
However, this past Friday, I hit a new record high (or record low depending on your point of view). 5 parking tickets in 1 hour. FIVE! ...In One Hour! ...Written by 5 different traffic cops. (And at $115 bucks a pop, that ain’t cheap).
Here's what happened. I returned to my truck within 2 minutes of double parking it, and there was a traffic violations specialist, in the middle of writing my third parking ticket for that day. The traffic cop writing me this ticket, writes me a ticket just about every day, same time - same place.
When he saw me coming he said to me “I love seeing UPS trucks. It’s an easy ticket to write because you guys don’t argue with us and give us a hard time”.
I move on and continue delivering packages. About 10 minutes later, I come out a building and there is a female cop writing me ticket #4. I pick up the other 3 tickets, show her and say to her, “This is a new record, 4 tickets in less than an hour”.
She apologetically says to me, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You should have said something. Or you should have at least put the tickets on the front of the truck so we could see them”. I said “Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll try that”.
So I go to the next stop, but this time I have the 4 tickets visibly displayed on the front of the truck, tucked in by the windshield. I exit the building and to my suprise, another traffic violations specialist is writing me ticket #5.
I guess he didn’t want anyone to see how many tickets I had, so he picked up the other 4 tickets and folded them all together along with ticket #5, so it only looked like one ticket. C’mon Mayor Bloomberg - Give UPS a break!