A few months ago I was involved in a teensy tiny itty bitty fender bender on a rainy day on my way home from work. Long story short, I hydroplaned very slowly into the car in front of me. Barely any damage to speak of. However Officer 'New-on-the-job-and-needs-to-prove-he-can-crack-down-on-the-criminals" decided to slap me with a ticket- a Careless and Imprudent ticket to be precise. Cody's dad put it like this:
"It's like going fishing without a hunting permit and getting charged with murder."
Very luckily for me Cody's dad Dan used to be a traffic cop and is now working in the court house where I was supposed to go to court. So rather than pay $300 for an attorney+ court costs+ fines, he helped me out a bit.
He was new in the courthouse he took it upon himself to find out who the prosecuting attorney was on my ticket and sought her out. Their conversation went a bit like this:
"Hi Mrs Choi how are you? Listen, my daughter got this ticket and I was wondering if I could maybe help her out..."
"Ummm, who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Dan I've worked here for years, I see you around here all the time." (lies, he just started)
"Oooh, I see. Uh, I guess I could help you out."
She talked it down to a non-moving violation and all I needed to do was pay the fine. Yay :D
So the other day before I went to work I stopped by the court house to pay the $65.50 I was told it would cost. This would only take a few minutes, go in, pay, leave. Right? Wrong.
I went in with my $70 cash, said hello to Dan on my way in, and went upstairs to the traffic office. I told the lady behind the counter I needed to pay for my ticket. She asked me my name and how to spell it. She couldn't find the ticket in her stack. She verified the spelling of my name and typed it into her computer. Couldn't find it. Rechecks her stack. Nope. So she gets up and starts asking the other eight ladies in her office if they knew where the ticket was. They asked if I had had an attorney. I told them no, that my father-in-law was a security guard downstairs and he had talked to the prosecutor for me and had taken care of it. They asked his name but the didn't know him because he was so new. Kept looking, kept looking. Nothing. Then finally after about 10 minutes they locate the ticket and inform me that it was still on the docket for the next day when I would have had my court date in front of the judge. They said I could maybe talk to the prosecutor again.
So I go back downstairs to where Dan was and he asked if I got everything squared away and I said no, that the ticket hadn't been changed yet. By that time, the traffic office lady called the security station to ask if a Dan Rhoads even worked there to make sure I wasn't lying. So after confirming he was who I said he was, we both headed up to the fifth floor to the prosecuting lawyer's office.
Dan talked to the secretary and had her call Mrs Choi and admitted us into the backroom. Dan told her the situation and she pulled my file saying she must have forgotten to change it from a C&I to a muffler violation. So the three of us head back down to the traffic office and all I'm thinking is 'I'm being escorted by a security guard and an attorney. People will think I shanked someone... Awesome.'
We walk in, she scribbles some stuff on the ticket and she was on her way, and Dan headed back to his post. I hand the fixed ticket to the lady I first talked to, who was much more cordial when she found out a wasn't a lying criminal, and she closed the ticket and gave me a receipt and told me to head back down to the fine collection window downstairs to pay my $114 bill. UH, that's a LITTLE more than $64.50...
So back downstairs I went to pay and told the lady in the window that I only had $70 cash and asked if she could take the rest off of my debit card. She asked if I had MasterCard or Express. No, Visa. Well they didn't accept Visa. WHO IN THIS DAY AND AGE DOESN'T ACCEPT VISA?! But she very snootily informed me that the tax building across the street had an ATM. So I marched my butt across the street into some random building, took out the money I needed and hurried back because it was friggin freezing. So I went back through security, back to the fine lady, waited for her to get off her phone and finally paid my dumb fines.
FORTY. FIVE. MINUTES. Ugh.
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