i work in downtown houston and the company i work for does not provide parking. so either you pay to park in one of the surrounding lots or like most of us we park on the street a couple of blocks from the job. being as i didn't wanna pay up to $11 mon-wed for parking and then $5 for saturday parking (sunday the meters are free so i park on the street by a meter) i decided like most of the employees to park on the street.
well...i noticed that starting this week the city of houston started to put up meters where we were parking for free. what?!!? why???? so i park my car and as i am walking, a tow truck driver tells me to move a bit further so that i won't get towed. i'm thinking to myself, wow he didn't even have to do that. so i moved. i noticed i parked a few feet from a meter. so i go press the buttons on it to see if it works so that i can pay. doesn't work...i move on.
got to work, did my thing, around 4 i go on lunch. i call one of my friend's who works with me and she tells me her car got towed. she informed me she parked not too far from me. at this point i'm scared, thinking my car has been towed but she told me it was still there. she tells me that she stood there and watched the police officer order the tow truck driver to tow it and there was nothing she could do about it (way to go hpd) so i ask why and she said the officer told her she was parked in a no parking zone by a meter. 1) there are no signs saying not to park...only the sign in the empty lot telling us not to park and 2) the meter is not even on yet so how the hell could she pay? she had to pay $200 to get it out of tow. then about 2 or 3 more people's cars get towed the same night.
i ended up moving my car on my lunch break and paid $5 to park. i'm happy my car wasn't towed but that was really f*cked up the way the city is towing cars.