It’s 1:15 p.m. and this will be the 17th ticket R.C. Croy has issued since 11 a.m.
“It takes like a minute and a half to do it, and then I’m gone,” said Croy, a campus parking service worker.
He took the job a couple semesters ago because he was broke.
“I knew that everybody hated those guys, but I really needed the money,” Croy said.
Croy said he mostly enjoys his work. He likes riding around campus on his cart and can take breaks when he needs them.
He often gives students a lift to their cars, especially when it’s raining.
“I’ve met a lot of really nice people,” he said, “But everyone’s mad when they get a ticket.”
And finding vehicles to ticket is not a hard thing to do on this campus, he said.
The record is 108 tickets in seven hours, he said.
“I’ve given like 15 tickets an hour for many consecutive hours,” he said.
He doesn’t have a quota to meet and it’s his discretion to give a warning or a $15 or $25 ticket.
He understands that people are in a rush to get to class sometimes. And others need to park illegally just to go in a building for a few minutes.
“But some students park illegally in the same places every day, and every day they get tickets. I have the serial numbers of some cars memorized,” he said.
On some occasions, students approach him while he’s ticketing their car.
Croy said once he was placing a ticket on a windshield when the student walked up to the car.
The student ignored Croy, got in his car and started to drive toward him.
But he was so angry, that he got out of the car and confronted Croy.
“He was cursing and flipping out,” Croy said. “Then he shoved me, so I called the police.”
The police took the student out of class later. He had to do community service and write a formal letter of apology.
“The funny thing is that he had to do his service for the parking office,” he said. “It was for a $10 ticket.”
People will try anything to get out of a ticket, he said.
“Someone offered to buy me pizza once, but I don’t accept the offers,” he said.
Croy said he parks in the Central lot every day, but agrees there is a parking problem.
With all the construction, it seems there are fewer parking spaces, he said. There are plenty of spaces in the garages, but most students can’t afford to park there.
“I’d rather not give out as many tickets as I do,” he said.
