5 Parking Tickets in 1 Hour!

I have worked for UPS for over 7 years and have been on the same route for almost the last 5 years. My route is in New York City, in Manhattan, on the prestigious Upper East Side.

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 Im not blocking traffic and not double parked for more than a minute or so. Its in and out of the building quick as a ninja, and back to the truck.

Usually, I didnt 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 per month, I started getting one or two per 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.

Last 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 aint cheap).

Here's what happened. I got back to my truck within 2 minutes of double parking it and there was a traffic cop, in the middle of writing my third parking ticket for that day. I recognized the cop because he has written me many tickets in the past and we chat every now and then.

When he saw me coming he said to me I love seeing UPS trucks. Its an easy ticket to write because you guys dont 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, Im sorry. I didnt 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 Ill 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. When I come out of the building, Lo and Behold, there is another traffic cop writing me ticket #5.

I guess he didnt 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. Cmon Mayor Bloomberg - Give UPS a break!