To some students at The University of Memphis, they are the most hated people on campus, and others simply offer a cold stare as they pass by. The campus can be an unfriendly place for U of M parking attendants.
“They are just doing their job, but they are a little too picky,” said Jodie Chessor, a sophomore majoring in photography. “I got a ticket three times for having the sticker in the wrong spot.”
Armed with only ticket dispensers, The U of M parking attendants go forth across the campus every day, handing out tickets for parking violations ranging from parking on curbs to blocking in other vehicles.
“The only thing we are trying to do is protect the people who pay for parking,” said Angela Graziani, assistant manager of Parking Services. “By doing that, we have to give tickets to people who park illegally.”
The parking offices reported that 629 tickets were written last week. During the summer session, during which there are a lot more legal parking places to be found than there are during the fall or spring, The U of M collected over $24,000 in tickets.
In August alone, the parking offices reported over $20,000 in tickets.
Graziani said that on average, there are from three to six parking attendants scouting the lots around campus.
“The people who get irate are the people who repeatedly receive tickets,” Graziani said. “Most don’t take it to heart, but some think we target them and have something against them.”
Last week, a parking official was pushed and nearly hit by the car of a disgruntled student who became irate after receiving a parking ticket.
“It’s a job like everyone else has a job,” Graziani said. “People think we are looking out for people, but that just isn’t true.”
Tom Hefner, parking attendant at The U of M, said while giving out close to 10,000 parking tickets in a year’s span, he has run into several angry students.
“We get threatened all the time — almost on a weekly basis,” Hefner said. “(But) most of the people who threaten parking assistants are not students here.”
Hefner said parking attendants also get to hear a lot of interesting excuses.
“I gave a ticket out to a guy who said he was an ex-Navy SEAL and I shouldn’t give him a ticket and needed to be more patriotic,” Hefner said. “I ended up having call the police on him because he threatened to hit me.”
Hefner also said a woman told him he should not give her a ticket because she was “old enough to be his mother.”
One tactic used by U of M students to avoid receiving a ticket is placing old tickets on their windshields. Hefner said while the tactic is popular among students, parking officials quickly catch on to the scam.
Another increasingly popular tactic, Hefner said, is for people to impersonate pizza delivery employees so they can gain access to gated parking lots.
Parking officials said students, and even faculty, come up with new and more creative parking ploys every day,
According to Hefner, even though he is handing out over 1,000 tickets per month, this semester is slower than the last.
“I don’t have any remorse when I write someone a ticket,” Hefner said. “Why should I feel guilty for someone who parked in a handicapped space and is keeping someone else from parking there?”
