In case you don’t have enough to worry about already, let me add a new caution to your list.
Have you noticed that little red and white signs are sprouting up near parking lot entrances all over town warning that somebody might tow away your vehicle?
The signs themselves are illegal, according to the folks who govern such trivia. Like most bureaucracies, they have copious rules specifying the exact size and legibility of such signs. These local signs flunk.
One of my friends recently found out the hard way that you probably don’t want to park your wheels on any lot that sports one of those red and white signs. Which means, of course, that you probably can’t do business with any company that allows one to be posted.
My buddy (let’s call him Tom just to be sure you don’t know who he is) owns too many cars. To unclog his driveway, he got permission to park one automobile on the nearby lot of a closed business. Sometime that weekend his shiny old classic car vanished.
“My car’s been stolen!” Tom started to tell the cops. Then he spotted that ominous red and white sign with the tow truck on it. A quick call to the number on the sign verified who had it. If Tom would show up at the tow truck office with a wad of green stuff, they told him, he could have his wheels back. New dents and all.
Down in the capitol they have a thick book of rules governing the towing of abandoned, illegally parked, or otherwise misplaced vehicles. Tom said that in his case the towing company had broken a slew of them.
After almost a month of legal hassling, the car-towing, red-and-white-sign posting people agreed to pay Tom’s damages just before the judge made his ruling. You have to wonder how many unsuspecting folks in our town, lacking the time or tenacity of Tom, pay big bucks to get back their snatched vehicles.
So when you see one of those red and white parking lot signs, remind yourself that the people who put it there make their living by towing away cars. And beware.
Tom is the kind of fellow who might have turned this car-towing scam into a crusade, calling hotlines, holding press conferences, arousing a protest. But he says he’s just too busy right now.
How much bad stuff goes on where you live because good people are just too busy to say, “Not in my town”?