Oooh, that’s mean. Though we’d regularly call the cops when I worked retail. And we were something like two blocks from a police substation, so they’d just drive by, too. Man, there was nothing funnier than making an announcement on the overhead…
“Would the owner of the <color/make> that is parked in the fire lane please come to the front desk? There’s a police officer who’d like to speak with you.”
Do not attempt to eat CFS north of the Mason-Dixon line; it is a SOUTHERN dish. While NY has many fine restaurants and cooks, they just don’t understand true Southern food.
Agreed. I have a similar theory about Mexican food. The more charla en Español (thanks Babel Fish!) the more confident I am about getting a decent taco.
This thread reminds me of one day when I worked for a grocery store. I was a courtesy clerk, one of the people who helps customers get put groceries in their vehicles. It was right after we had a severe ice storm and I had been busy removing built up ice from our portion of the sidewalk all day when not busy helping anyone with their groceries. Some people had been parking in the fire lane, presumably to avoid any ice patches. Store policy was to allow parking in the fire lane for short periods of time, this had been relaxed a bit because of the conditions. To my knowledge, nobody had a problem with this except for the driver of a senior citizens’ shuttle. Normally I’d only see the shuttle once a week but it made a few trips that day. On about the third trip, with his passengers going about their business in the store, the driver started yelling at me about the line of (4?) vehicles in the fire lane. I calmly told him, “Sir, I can’t make them move.” I kept on telling him that until he went inside. I don’t know if he went to see a manager or not but if he did, the manager must have agreed with me. I didn’t hear anything else after that, neither from him nor from management.
Wow, some of you folks set off easily.
Although I cant stand people who park in fire lanes (for other reasons) it seemed obvious to me that County was joking. I actually laughed at his post. (of course I amuse easily)
Around? Damn, you got nice firemen. In NYC, I’m given to understand the standard operating procedure is to use a fireaxe to open a pair of windows, and run the hose in one side and out the other.
Are you familiar with county?
I’m sorry to say I seriously doubt he was kidding. That guy is a piece of work.
At our Wal-Mart there’s usually at least 5 cars parked in the fire lane. When I worked there I asked the manager why he never did anything about it. I got a speech about ‘not offending customers’
I always wondered why some cop didn’t just do a drive by once a day talk about filling up your ticket book easy.
Cops are a little reluctant to issue parking tickets on private business property unless asked to by the proprietor.
Dunno about other places in the country, but it is FireFighters that issue the tickets for illegal fire lane parking here in good ol Independence. My dad is a firefighter and his take is this: Firefighters don’t write tickets for firelane parking because such tickets go to the city’s general fund, which does not get to be used by the fire department at all. If the city had the funds go to the fire department, such tickets would be written quite often.
Cops in my city don’t write handicap parking tickets either. They have a sepearate department with a few guys that drive around the city writing tickets all day long.
matt, Lynn is right about not judging chicken-fried steak on the basis of what you got in New York. (Did they serve it with cocktail sauce instead of cream gravy?)
On the other hand, it’s best to avoid a “genuine New York-style deli” in Dallas.
And never eat at any restaurant called “Mom’s”.
Thats a fine sense of civic duty there. “We don’t get the money, so we don’t care if people park in fire lanes.” Nice way to discourage the practice.
:rolleyes: Oh please. Do you know how disgusted I felt when I learned that the money for library fines doesn’t go to the library at all? Its given as a bribe to the county in order to show that the library is “profitable” and worth keeping around.
In my state, firefighters have to hold bake sales and fundraisers just to get second-rate equipment in order to save lives. A little bit of resentment is warranted. We’re lucky we have them at all–We certainly don’t have them to collect money to line other people’s pockets.
Yeah, tell that to the family of the three or four people who burned up in an easily stoppable fire because some moron parked in front of a fire hydrant, and you were too busy wallowing in self pity to do your friggin’ job and make him move.
WTF??? 
Yeah Ilsa, we all know lots of people die because people park in the fire lanes. The firemen just sit there and go “shucks, we can’t get to the hydrant, guess we better leave”.
Neither firefighters nor civilians should have to pay the time and money it takes to deal with a car in the fire lane. People are stupid, and won’t stop parking their without active deterrents.
If tickets were written actively, it would greatly decrease the incidence of the rather drastic situation of a car in front of a hydrant, rather than forcing the car’s owner and the attending FF’s to deal with the unpleasantry of a car ripped to shreds to deal with a fire.
mhendo: Would you be so kind as to provide a cite that it’s the firefighters who write such citations and not the police?
Sorry, mhendo. That request should’ve been addressed to Epimetheus.
You mean other than my out of my Fathers mouth? You want me to ask him his union number and quote him verbatim? He is the Driver of the pumper on B shift in Independence, Mo. I can give you the number of his station if you so desire.
I certainly don’t condone his behavior.
And by the way, this is the Pit, not Great Debates, so go fuck yourself.