A couple of weeks ago I rushed out to my car pumped up that I was done with class for the week. My mood spiraled downward when I saw two uniformed men standing next to my car and a piece of yellow metal locked onto the front tire. I instantly knew it was because I had unpaid parking tickets.
"How do I go about getting this boot off my car?" I asked.
The officer answered my question in a tone that seemed to mock me.
"You'll have to go to Parking Services and pay all the outstanding tickets. It's like $500 because you've got over 12 of them."
"How can I go pay for my tickets if there's a boot on my car?"
"Guess you'll have to go ride the shuttle there."
Instead of getting on the shuttle I called parking services and paid my tickets over the phone. A couple of minutes later the police officers got a call that my boot could be removed.
"I appreciate you telling me that I could just call and make a payment over the phone."
"Well, I would have let you know if you weren't being so rude."
The other officer who had started to remove the boot and who had been quiet the whole time decided to chime in right about then.
"You know I can just leave this boot on here if you're going to be rude about it."
"Well I just paid over $500 so you better take the boot off."
As he went back to work removing the boot, the other officer continued to tell me that the parking tickets weren't his problem because it was my fault for getting them and not paying them. I admitted they were my fault, but stated I couldn't possibly be the only person to get upset about it and it certainly wasn't necessary for him to treat me so rudely.
I walked away from the situation frustrated, upset and thinking that these so-called professional peacekeepers were jerks.
According to Nancy Wray, office manager of Parking Services, there have been other students in the past who have managed to acquire hundreds of dollars worth of parking tickets. Wray said that department gives approximately 200 tickets a day on the Ball State University campus. Between Fall Semester and the beginning of Spring Semester there are 28 weeks of classes, five days a week meaning that roughly 28,000 parking tickets are written.
With that many demands for money as punishment for illegally parking, I imagine some students direct their anger towards the parking service employees.
It isn't the fault of these workers though. They are just doing their job, but I was just one person out of many that I'm sure they encountered that day and they left me thinking they were jerks.
I started to wonder since this is their job and they know they will face some level of conflict aren't they trained to deal with this verbal confrontation?
According to Wray, all Parking Services employees have ongoing conflict training sessions that involve teaching them things such as customer service and conflict resolution.
One technique that both Parking Services and the University Police Department use is a training tool known as verbal judo.
According to the Verbal Judo Institute's Web site, the technique works by teaching officers to give people options which are supposed to help keep them peaceful and orderly. According to law enforcement resource, the technique is required in many states and more than 500,000 police officers have been trained with it. The technique describes how police officers can improve the public opinion about them and also avoid unnecessary conflict if they approach people with comments and a vocal tone that comes off as helpful and caring.
I was just one student who let her emotions get to her and ended up having a bad experience with a Parking Services employee. If these officers and employees aren't utilizing the training they receive then on a daily basis, hundreds of people could be building bad opinions about a profession that is supposed to do good.
I know that I needed to pay my parking tickets and my attitude was unnecessary, but I don't have formal training to deal with the situation and I wasn't doing my job. I was going through my day and encountered a bad surprise. The employees are trained to deal with it; maybe they should have done it properly and the public opinion would be a little more positive.
Kelley Ellert is a senior public relations major and writes 'Krellert' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Kelley at krellert@bsu.edu
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