A Person’s Tale Of Malicious Compliance And Saving $625 On Parking Due To Admin’s Negligent Attitude To Work
Interview With Author
When you really think about it, parking is nothing but a huge pain where the sun don’t shine.
Humor me for a second: as soon as someone becomes a proud car owner, they suddenly have to worry about where they leave their car when they’re not using it. And you can’t leave it just anywhere—it has to be a particular spot that allows for cars to be there. And guess what?! Not all spaces are free to use. And those that are free are more often than not taken. It doesn’t help that some people can’t park to save their life. See? Nothing but trouble.
And it doesn’t end there as we have stories like this surfacing online, showing just how problematic parking can be. But hey, there is a silver lining. If you can find a loophole of sorts, that is.
More Info: Reddit
Parking has always been a huge pain no matter how you look at it
Image credits: Erik Mclean (not the actual photo)
But there is a way to fight at least some of its aspects, as displayed in this fellow Redditor’s malicious compliance story
Image credits: roodeeMental
Image credits: Stephan Müller (not the actual photo)
Long story short, what started off as a $240 fine ended in $625 worth of free parking spread across 21 months
Reddit user u/roodeeMental recently went to r/MaliciousCompliance to share how a parking ticket led them to saving tons of money. The story goes that OP was in isolation for 2 weeks due to Covid, which meant they weren’t really going to their car or using it. It was also very cold outside and the parking permit sticker fell off and was out of sight. One wild parking administration officer later, OP got a fine that ended up being nearly £200, or almost US$240, after a stubborn back-and-forth.
The parking admin explained that while everything was in order with the payment, the car had to have the permit sticker visible for the officer to see. They didn’t see it, so they issued a ticket. And it was at this point that OP realized they didn’t check the database. Only the permit. This immediately prompted OP to call and cancel their parking subscription—which was £25 or almost US$30. And then they hung up and continued parking there.
21 months have passed by since then. Not a single payment has been made for the parking space. Not a single fine has been received for parking violation either. As long as the sticker is there—albeit faded beyond belief—it’s all good. This meant that in those 21 months, OP has saved £525, or around US$625, for parking. All because they maliciously complied with how things work there.
Bored Panda got in touch with u/roodeeMental to learn more about the parking situation in their area. Bored that day, OP figured they’d share their “minor accomplishment” only to be surprised with nearly 12,500 upvotes (98% positive) in a bit over a day.
“If I knew about how their system works, I could’ve started [maliciously complying] on my second month,” elaborated OP. “In my account, I could’ve kept my parking charge lower. But honestly, I like to be non-exploitative. However, these guys really pushed my buttons”
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
Well, they pushed enough buttons for the malicious compliance to last 21 months, with next month being the last, thus ending the nearly 2-year streak of not giving a damn about motor vehicle placement charges. “I move out in a month, I’m glad it’s gone unrecognized this whole time. If I was to renew the permit, I could do so for a month at a cost of breaking my streak, however it doesn’t seem to matter how faded it gets.”
We also asked OP for their thoughts on how this situation even developed in the first place—is it really the case that nobody knows about the exploit, or is it as simple as just nobody giving a foop?
“I think it’s more of a case that the effort and time put into checking a proper system would cost more time, effort, and money than to not use a database system. Much like how banks nowadays don’t check signatures,” elaborated OP.
“I also think that the letting agency and parking agency work together affording different payments for different conditions, i.e. no real fixed price, just a permit you agreed to pay for. Other people here will definitely know before I leave, I’ll be leaving a sign in the hallway notice board for other car users (I didn’t want to let the secret out before I left in case they did cotton on).”
“The only thing I’ll add is that there’s an active battle almost from those who have land of any sort to exploit those who don’t. This sort of greed needs to be better regulated.”
You can check out the post in its entirety here, so be sure to give your upvote to OP for a maliciously compliant job well done. And while you’re at it, give us an upvote and share your experiences with parking bullpies in the comment section below!
It didn’t take long for nearly 12.5K people to slap that upvote button, and comment everything from stories to jokes to ideas to one-up the malicious compliance
Many years ago I worked at a place that had no on site parking so you either had to pay £5 a day to park in a pay and display car park nearby (basically the ONLY car park) or chance it by parking on the neighbouring streets and risk a fine. I stubbornly refused to pay to park so I just parked in the streets and after roughly 8 weeks I got caught and had a £25 fine. I paid it because I was caught fair and square (even though I couldn't figure out why there were parking restrictions where I had parked other than for revenue generation but that's another story). However a £25 fine was much cheaper than the £200 I would have spent parking "legally" over those 8 weeks so I continued to do it. I think over the course of the 2 years I parked there I got caught maybe 5 or 6 times in total.
Ha ha. This exact scenario was a homework problems in a grad level statistics course I took 3 decades ago. The money amounts were different, but the scenario was exactly this. The problem demonstrated that if you want to minimize how much you have to pay, sometimes the optimal solution isn't A (pay to park in lot) or B (park illegally and risk getting a ticket), but can be a combination of A and B (pay to park in the lot x% of the time, park illegally the remainder of the time).
Load More Replies...
Many years ago I had to do an internship. I didn't earn any money, you could only get there by car. I had to buy a parking ticket every three hours. If I was 10 minutes late I had to pay a 10 euro fine. So almost every day I paid 9 euros for parking and 10 euros fine. I then found out that if I didn't have a parking ticket the penalty was a fee of 5 euros per day.
The parking in one town is a pain, i wish could post pictures. See they put multiple signs on one post. On one streets post it says no parking, below that it says no parking every third Friday and below that gives a bunch of rules in legal code. I got a ticket for no parking. It was on a Sunday and ticket was because I park past the sign. Despite no yellow curb and white parking labe leading up to curb. Despite all this I got a ticket.
Many years ago I worked at a place that had no on site parking so you either had to pay £5 a day to park in a pay and display car park nearby (basically the ONLY car park) or chance it by parking on the neighbouring streets and risk a fine. I stubbornly refused to pay to park so I just parked in the streets and after roughly 8 weeks I got caught and had a £25 fine. I paid it because I was caught fair and square (even though I couldn't figure out why there were parking restrictions where I had parked other than for revenue generation but that's another story). However a £25 fine was much cheaper than the £200 I would have spent parking "legally" over those 8 weeks so I continued to do it. I think over the course of the 2 years I parked there I got caught maybe 5 or 6 times in total.
Ha ha. This exact scenario was a homework problems in a grad level statistics course I took 3 decades ago. The money amounts were different, but the scenario was exactly this. The problem demonstrated that if you want to minimize how much you have to pay, sometimes the optimal solution isn't A (pay to park in lot) or B (park illegally and risk getting a ticket), but can be a combination of A and B (pay to park in the lot x% of the time, park illegally the remainder of the time).
Load More Replies... Many years ago I had to do an internship. I didn't earn any money, you could only get there by car. I had to buy a parking ticket every three hours. If I was 10 minutes late I had to pay a 10 euro fine. So almost every day I paid 9 euros for parking and 10 euros fine. I then found out that if I didn't have a parking ticket the penalty was a fee of 5 euros per day.
The parking in one town is a pain, i wish could post pictures. See they put multiple signs on one post. On one streets post it says no parking, below that it says no parking every third Friday and below that gives a bunch of rules in legal code. I got a ticket for no parking. It was on a Sunday and ticket was because I park past the sign. Despite no yellow curb and white parking labe leading up to curb. Despite all this I got a ticket.
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