Where web standards meet behavioral psychology

On Sunday, December 6, 2009 I woke up early. Usually I attend the 11:15 AM service at Athens Church, which allows me to “sleep-in” until about 10:30 or so. On this day, I arose at 8:00 anticipating that I would confront the judicial system at 9:00.

I arrive at the Athens-Clarke County Courthouse around 8:45 AM. I don’t bother dropping any coins in the meter because on the weekend, downtown parking is free, thank goodness. I approach the large wood and glass double door of the courthouse – the main entrance – only to find it locked. I take a step back and look around, but there is no one in sight. “Maybe I’m the only one with court today?” I think. I ponder the circumstance for awhile and then I notice the small text on the door that states the regular hours of the courthouse. Sure enough, Sunday falls outside the regular hours, and the door script advises me to use the side entrance.

I make my way around the building and I encounter a knee-high gate that blocks some stairs leading up to another glass double door, though less ornate than the one out front. “Emergency Exit Only” reads the bold red text on this door, so I continue on around the side of the courthouse.

The next door I encounter is a plain glass door, far less impressive than the wood accents on the front door, and much less imposing than the stairs leading up to the emergency exit. This entrance would be better suited attached to a school or medical clinic. But at least it is unlocked, so I enter.

Down a short hallway I find the metal detectors and baggage scanners, as expected. But where are the policemen that staff such equipment? There doesn’t appear to be any qualified individual (or any individual at all, for that matter) around, so I proceed past. Sunday must be considered low priority for security threats, is my justification. The halls inside are quiet except for the hum of the vending machines. I follow the guided arrows to the municipal court, which appears empty. The door is locked though, and the blinds are closed. It must already be in session, I begin thinking as I step back. There is a second door a little further down. I try the handle, but it is locked as well. I peer through the blinds as best I can and I can’t spot the judge. Or any lawyers. Or any bailiffs. In fact, I become quite certain that there is no one in the room at all. Now I am confused. The hallways are still empty. With 9:00 growing closer I become suspect that I have not seen anyone. No policemen, no traffic offenders, no one at all.

I begin checking all the signage that hangs in the hallway in a quest to find a phone number of some kind that I can call and double-check my court date, though it is plainly written on my ticket: 12/6/09. As I pace the hallways utterly befuddled, I see a sign of life! A security guard, with his left arm in a sling, emerges from around a corner. He seems as surprised to see me as I am to see him. “Can I help you?” he inquires. I relate to him my purpose to dispute a parking citation, which I pull from my pocket and show him. “There is no court on Sunday,” he says as he glances down at my ticket. Upon seeing that I have shown up as designated by the citation, proving that I’m not simply incompetent, he responds with “Hm… well that is certainly strange. We’ve never held court on Sunday.” He advises me to return the next day, stop by the clerk’s window, and that she would probably issue me a new court date. Oh well… at least I am right across the street from The Classic Center and just in time for Athens Church’s 9:15 AM service.

Monday, December 7, 2009 @ 8:00 AM
I stop by the courthouse on my way to work. I drop a nickel (the minimum) in the meter which allows me twelve minutes to run in, see the clerk, and be on my way. I enter the courthouse via the side entrance (as the day before), pass through the security checkpoint (properly staffed and fully operational), and approach the clerk’s window with my citation in hand. The clerk takes one look at the 12/6/09 date and tells me that I’d be fine to go on down the hall and sit in on today’s court session, scheduled to begin at 9:00 AM. Slightly perturbed at this unexpected absence from work, I call the office to tell them I’d be in as soon as I can.

Traffic arraignments can unfold in a number of ways. Sometimes they dismiss all minor traffic offenders carrying tickets below a certain specified value, sometimes they separate minor traffic offenses from other more time-consuming trials, and sometimes they just make you sit, grin, and bear all of the proceedings. On this particular day, they were roll-calling from a long list of traffic offenders. As each person’s name was called they were to exit the courtroom and form a line out in the hallway. I didn’t count, but I estimate that some 200 names were called, leaving the courtroom itself sparsely populated. I would know because I was still seated within. I noticed that the names seemed to be going alphabetically, and when they reach the letter G, then H, then I… I decided that my fear was realized. Having been given an improper court date, I was in court on a day that they were not prepared for me to be in court. In a stroke of half-luck, the judge acknowledged that myself and a couple of others were anxiously awaiting our dismissal to the hallway, and advised us to go ahead even though we weren’t on the predesignated list. I call this a stroke of “half-luck” because had my name been called at the appropriate spot in the alphabetical order, I would not have been at the very back of a 200-something person line that was moving very slowly. But there I stood, around three corners from the final destination.

Fast-forward two hours and I’m finally at the front of the line. I very politely speak with one of the two ladies listening to each individual plead his or her case as if she can do something about it. She agrees with me that it is rare for a citation to be as malinformed as mine appears to be. She recommends that I return to the courtroom and have a seat while she works some magic with the city’s attorney to see if my case can be dismissed. It doesn’t take long – maybe five minutes – before I’m approached by the city’s attorney in the courtroom who, in a whispering voice, tells me that she doesn’t understand why the clerk had asked me to come back in because there was nothing she could do. She didn’t handle traffic cases.

So I return to the clerk, she confesses that apparently I still need to enter a plea, and to no one’s surprise, that plea is “not guilty.” Court, ho!

On November 21, 2009 I attended the last home game of the Georgia football season. The game was against Kentucky and Athens was crawling with crowds of people – 96,000 to be more accurate, plus the six-figure population that comes into town seeking just to tailgate and attend the after-party. Parking was limited, as one would expect on a game day. Luckily for me, there was one spot open on the street that was very familiar to me.

Let’s go back…

As an employee of the University of Georgia, my office was on campus. Having inherited from my father a financial mentality caked with frugality, I had not purchased access to official UGA parking lots for the new academic semester. In part, this was to save money . However, my staff position at UGA was temporary in nature, the expiration of which was quickly approaching. And remembering the hassle of acquiring an overpriced parking pass the previous year (there was some confusion about my staff priority – the system still identified me as a student), I determined that life would be made simpler if I could just arrive to work early and park on the street ahead of the 8am rush of students heading to class.

As it turns out, I am not a morning person. After only a few days of making it to work by 7:30 AM, I slowly found my arrival inching closer and closer to 8:00. That would be fine too, except that by 7:45 or so, the mad influx of students on their way to class would consume all available street parking. Luckily, I drive a small car and pride myself on being a master parallel parker, so on most mornings I was able to squeeze myself between a couple of loosely spaced vehicles. However, there was one location between two driveways that was large enough for a car of any size to park, and for a car the size of mine, it could be done with plenty of breathing room. The curb did appear yellow in color (though very faded), yet I began noticing vehicles parking there to seemingly no consequence. In fact, I observed the same vehicle parked there on consecutive days – indicating to me that either they felt secure in their behavior or they were a glutton for punishment and potentially a tow.

After observing these repeat offenders, I decided to have a closer look. The curb was located directly in front of a newly constructed building (completed about a year before), and so a ~3-foot section of the curb, where their driveway emptied out into the street, was brand new and untouched. A little further down, adjacent to the pre-existing driveway that serves as a subtle entrance to a hidden parking deck, there appeared to be a solid coat of yellow paint, eroded by years of wind, rain, and ice, but still smooth in texture and very noticeably colored. The aged section of curb centralized between these two driveways, however, did not have such a coat of paint. Yes, the curb maintained a faint yellow tint, but no physical layer of paint was visible . Additionally, there was a skid mark on the front side of the curb that began close to the old driveway and abruptly ended where the smooth texture of paint also ceased. On the other side of the newly constructed building, just around the corner on an adjacent street, they had installed a second, brand new driveway. But the curb surrounding this driveway had received a nice fresh coat of paint – yellow where expected, and black where deemed appropriate – clearly defining the existing amount of parkable curb.

So logic took over my thought process. It seemed to me that this curb’s questionable state of repair was a result of the yellow paint being intentionally removed in preparation to receive a fresh coat of paint – just as the curb on the adjacent street had been. For reasons unbeknown to me, apparently this curb had gone overlooked at the completion of the construction project and so it never received said repainting.

Based on my observations, inspections, and rationale, I decided to experiment and try parking there myself. So the next day, I did just that. Arriving at work around 8:00 AM, I found this location vacant and promptly parked my 2008 red Chevy Aveo hatchback on the curb in front of this new building. Upon leaving work around 5:00 PM later that day, I found my car still safely parked, with no indication of consequence. No windshield citation, no warning, no tire boot, and clearly no towing service. So the following day, I tried again. Same result. The next day, same result. Two months later, I had consistently parked my car in this location every weekday for nine hours each day without the slightest indication of wrongdoing.

Back to game day…

My unpainted curb, with its faded yellow tint, violated the trust that I had reliably placed upon it. I exited the stadium with a couple of friends and we made our way to my car. As we approached, I could see what appeared to be a piece of paper strategically placed under my windshield wiper. It was common to find concert fliers, restaurant coupons, etc. being mass-distributed in such a fashion on game days, and so I assumed that this was just another piece of trash that I could ignore and throw away when I got home. But no, on this day the Athens-Clarke County Police had failed to recognize the logic and effort I put into justifying my parking decision. I was ticketed for parking on a yellow curb, which carries a fine of $50.

Immediately I noted the negligence of the ticketing officer. Aside from overlooking the points of inspection that I performed on the curb itself, this citation was laden with mistakes. It took only seconds to notice, after retrieving the ticket from my windshield, that the day’s date was incorrect (marked 10/21/09) and that the fill-in-the-blank location details did not exist. So within about 30 seconds or so, I had resolved to appear on my assigned court date and dispute the infraction.