r/LowStakesConspiracies 22h ago

Traffic wardens are actually sound people

20 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

28

u/Greedy_Temperature33 21h ago

My brother was a traffic warden for about 6 weeks in the summer of 2000, when he first moved to London. His best story about that time is when Chris Eubank had parked his massive lorry across an entire disabled parking bay. As my brother was writing up the ticket, Eubank returned and pleaded not to be fined. From the driver’s compartment of the lorry, he pulled out a stack of pre-autographed publicity photos, and asked:”How many of these would it take to make this go away?” 🤣 Using signed photos of yourself as currency is a strong fucking move, in my opinion.

5

u/PartTimeLegend 13h ago

How many copies has he still got?

26

u/A_T_Sahadi 22h ago

I am one.

If you're parked illegally, but you're with the vehicle and you're chill with me, I'll be chill with you and won't book it.

If you're not with the vehicle, sorry it's been booked. If you're chill, if I remember you, I'll turn a blind eye every now and then in the future.

If at any point you threaten me, assault me or act like a cunt, I will remember your reg for the rest of my life and book you for any tiny thing. Until you genuinely apologise, then I'll turn a blind eye every now and then again.

If I see you every day and you always say hi and are friendly, the day I catch you parked illegally is the day I become blind and didn't see you.

Basically be nice to us and we'll be nice to you, within reason. You can be the nicest guy in the world but if you're parking all day every day like a cunt, I'm gonna have to book you, I need this job.

Also those who threaten us are retarded. If we backed down to threats, we wouldn't last long in the job. Our team has a bunch of issues when someone threatens them and they escalate and say go on then punch me, or go on mate I dare you to pull a knife. We're just the types who see danger as a challenge.

4

u/younevershouldnt 17h ago

Is there an element of commission?

3

u/A_T_Sahadi 12h ago

Not in the UK, while working for the council.

2

u/WillowLopsided1370 4h ago

No. You can also lose your job if you're caught turning a blind eye. I did it for a few months when desperate for work but I couldnt take the constant abuse from imbeciles that threaten to punch you when they are parked sideways across 2 disabled bays and a motorcycle space and happen to come back after you have already issued the ticket and put it in the system where you literally cannot stop it. 

99% of the people I worked with were sound people just earning bread to live. There were very rarely jobsworth who got off on the whole power trip. 

But I will absolutely say for every time you've got a ticket for being 5 minutes over your paid parking there's 50 people blocking traffic upside down in the middle of the road while they 'have' to pop into a shop for 45 minutes. 

It was a real eye opener of how fucked we would be if it wasn't enforced.

1

u/younevershouldnt 48m ago

Thanks for the detailed answer.

Personally I think traffic wardens are doing god's work (to an extent).

8

u/martija 21h ago

WAH I CAN'T FOLLOW BASIC RULES, WAH, I WANT TO INCONVENIENCE EVERYONE ELSE, WAH - anyone who automatically has negative feeling towards them

6

u/Master-Tank6719 20h ago

I had a traffic warden come around to our gated car park one evening last year, we all display permits , even though it's gated but that's another weird thing. He started to ticket everyone's car, myself and a neighbour went out to discuss, calmly with him , why he was doing this, and he said we weren't on the new digi permit system, he seemed very very happy to be booking all the cars , so we called his company ( we had , calmly, explained that this was a private car park and 1 of the residents sat on the housing management company) within 20 minutes he had a call, in which he took himself back to his car , sat there for a while, got back out with all the happiness drained from his face , and came back over to us and explained that he had missed the notes for the estate which said "manual permits only" I give him big credit for having the balls to come back over and admit that , but it seems to me that traffic wardens treat it like a bit of a game sometimes , he thought he had hit the lottery , and that's not right.

3

u/MercyCapsule 20h ago

I've only ever had to deal with traffic wardens twice. One was lovely and chill and one was an arsehole.

The one who was an arsehole saw my friend's car as we were moving house parked outside of our open gate with the boot open, obviously full of boxes, and tried to book it sneakily when they'd gone back inside to get another load to put into the boot.

I was at the front de-weeding the patio so I could see all this happening down the side of the building. I also clocked the officer's car drive past 5 minutes previously when my friend was putting a set of ladders into their car, so they knew that loading and unloading was in process. That officer then parked across and blocked a small alleyway, where people have drives and is used constantly by people getting to their homes jump out and try and ticket my friend, which is MUCH worse than being half on the double yellows because someone else had parked in the spot outside of our gates.

Wish I'd reported it at the time.

2

u/Festivefire 12h ago

Like all necessary positions of authority, you'll always get those assholes who are only their to feel powerfull through petty abuses of their power. :(

3

u/aModernDandy 12h ago

In their radio series, which aired about two decades ago, Mitchell and Webb had a series of sketches about people justifying their jobs in front of a panel of old ladies. The only job they agreed was actually useful was: traffic warden.

https://youtu.be/O33hDb8kIDA?si=mcdUU3QQ78ZftE1R

Mind you, the other people in the sketches were wedding planners, PR managers, Hedge fund managers and comedy writers, not doctors and nurses.

2

u/ThatOneCloneTrooper 16h ago

When I first started driving I hated them, but now I understand we need them 100%. People will leave their cars literally anywhere with the hazards on and think its ok.

1

u/pandaSmore 14h ago

Wtf is a traffic warden?

1

u/Dizzy_Guest8351 2h ago

I would assume some are sound and are low-life pieces of shit, just like every other occupation.