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What’s the real cost of a parking ticket?

Francisco Miraval

I recently visited a certain place in Denver where, due to professional reasons, I have to go quite frequently for professional reasons. After completing a short exchange, I went back to the parking lot only to discover that I have been issued a parking ticket (for an amount double than the usual one) for supposedly parking in the wrong place.

I checked the place I parked and the signs in the parking lot and I confirmed what I already knew: I have parked in the right place. That was several weeks ago and since then I called several times the phone number printed in the parking ticket to solve the issue, but nobody ever answered the phone. Finally, fearing an increase in the amount of the ticket, I decided to pay it.

Obviously, I also decided never to go back to that particular place, not only because I got and unfair parking ticket, but also because there was no way to talk with anybody to solve the issue.

In other words, that company got the money of my parking ticket, but it is not going to get several hundred dollars that otherwise I would have spent there. Hence, the question of the title of this commentary: What’s the real cost of issuing a parking ticket?

Let’s put it in this way: How much are we willing to lose in the long term so we can gain something in the short term? Whose money we will take only to lose a lot more money later due to our initial actions? What’s the future price, then, of our present actions?

I happen to know a few other people who also frequently go to the same place where I got the parking ticket. I spoke with some of them and I learned they also had problems in the same parking lot and, as a consequence, they also decided never to return to that place. Of course, it was not a surprise to hear that.

If other would follow that example, in a short time that parking lot would be empty and there would be no cars to be ticketed for parking lot violations. If that happens, the company would run out of customers really soon. (I don’t want that to happen. I wish somebody would see what is happening and modify the situation, so they could attract many more customers and become as prosperous as possible.)

Regardless, this is an interesting situation. Due to our immense desire –many times motivated by greed– to generate as much income as possible in the fastest and easiest way, we focus so much only on the immediate rewards that we forget about the future. Or, in other words, we build the present with the ruins of the future.

If our present actions erode our future and the only thing left of the future are its ruins, what’s the point of doing today what we do, even if it is legal and effective? Obviously, there is no point.

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