Mark Park

Mark believes in the old adage, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". In fact I think it's his religion. For example, I have been with him in a store where I have watched him terrorize the manager over a simple price tag mistake, eventually getting the product at the reduced price, or even for free. When traveling I have seen him get upgrades just because he wore somebody down with his irritating, insistent demands.

A couple of years ago our little town of Gayberry installed parking meters. For some reason this irritated Mark, and he took it upon himself to make getting rid of them his personal crusade. He has cornered the vice mayor, and pled his case. The city manager has been the target of his constant phone calls, and the police chief has had to deal with his gripes about the tickets, and the ticket writers. He's had confrontations out on the street with the parking meter company employees, challenging the legitimacy of the meters. Mind you, Mark has never got a parking ticket. I suppose every cause needs it's champion, and besides I figured it was a nice hobby for him.

Monday afternoon the phone rang. It was the city manager for Mark. For about fifteen minutes I heard Mark's loud, squeaky voice going on about the ticket writers not wearing seat belts in the golf cart that they zip up and down the boulevard in. "...and they park in the traffic lane while they write the tickets, blocking traffic..."

On and on it went, and I figured the city manager would realize he had one of those nuts on the phone, humor him a little bit and then say goodbye. Well guess what. Today the ticket writers in their ticket writing golf cart were wearing seatbelts, parking off the street and walking over to the cars to ticket them. He didn't get the meters removed, but he got something done. I just hope they don't know who owns that PT Cruiser parked out on the boulevard.