Parking nightmare
Written on 1:46 a.m. by My gratitude journal
Picture this: it's 6h30PM and you arrive at Montreal General Hospital to visit your dying grand-mother. You find a parking space available on the street right in front of the hospital, in the same way you have every day of the week for the last 2 months. Other cars are parked there as well. You don't pay attention to the orange-temporary-covered-with-snow-sign that warns of snow clearance later on that day (see picture below).
8h30PM - You leave the hospital and find your car has disappeared with all the other cars on the street. Ok, you beat yourself for not noticing the sign and then how do you get your car back after it's been towed by the City of Montreal?
8h45PM - You give your first call to the infamous 514-872-3777. A lady informs you that she won't receive the information concerning your vehicule untill a good 2 hours after the towing time. In the meanwhile, all you can do is walk around the nearby streets and try to locate it yourself.
8h50PM to 9h30PM - You jump in your parents' car and let them help you search and look around the nearby streets. UNSUCCESSFULLY.
9h35PM - Your parents drop you off with your girlfriend in a restaurant for a break and dinner and they go home.
10h30PM - 2 hours after the maximum possible towing time, another call confirms that nobody has yet heard of your vehicule being towed. "Martin" (one of the phone agents) decides to help us out and says he will calls us back when he can locate the missing car. You go back outside, in the snowy weather and, with the help of your girlfriend, start searching the streets again, as pedestrians. With no luck.
11h30PM - A few calls later, still no news from the car. Martin decides to send a trooper to look out with his car and search the streets for us.
12h30AM - The car has been located. You have a 92$ fine to pay, and the car is not even on the same street written on the contravention (the car is on Côte-des-Neiges, contravention says McDougall).
1h20AM - You arrive home. How do you feel?
To the dumb-ass who towed me and didn't bother calling the city impound to let them know where you dumped my car, resulting in 4 hours of searching in the bitter winter cold: I would like to conduct a simple experiment of human pain tolerance on you... picture all the know tortures of the world at once: being strapped down to a table while water slowly drips on the same spot on your forehead until it eventually bores a hole through your skull, as you're being dismembered by 4 horses attached to your arms and legs while being covered in honey and devoured by millions of ants, and worst of all: all the while being forced to listen to thousands of horrible knock-knock jokes and "why did the chicken cross the road" jokes and asking politely for more after each one...
As for the incompetence of the city of Montreal... well what else is new... Although I have to admit, I thought it was a nice touch: the half-assed job leaving a pratically invisible snow-removal sign dangling from the lamppost, then the cherry on the sunday: the wrong street name on the ticket left on my car... as for your 92$ fine... you can pretty much stick it where the sun doesn't shine... I'll see you in court.
That's how I feel.