Some people just can’t catch a break when it comes to dealing with parking fines and local officials.

Imagine getting fined for moving your car exactly where the city council said to park it – only to find out that it still wasn’t good enough for them.

In the following story, one driver plays a game of cat and mouse with the City Council, leading to nothing but confusion.

Here’s how it played out.

Some parking fines? Fine, some parking.

This was a year or two ago.

The house I was living in had a garage, but it had been converted into a workshop, so I always had to park on the street.

I got a letter from the council saying they would be resurfacing all the streets in the area, and all cars had to be off the road so that they could replace all the bitumen.

The problem was that they didn’t say what streets or in what order they were doing them in.

So, I, trying to be considerate, moved my car off the road and parked in my old driveway between the road and the footpath.

I made sure I was not blocking the footpath or on the grass nature strip.

The very next day I noticed a parking ticket on my car, the reason printed on the fine was vague mentioning obstruction of access so I rang the council.

Frustrated, they called the City Council for answers.

The conversation went as follows:

Me: “Hi, I received a parking fine that I don’t think is valid. Can I get some more information about the road rule violation so that I can contest it and have it cancelled?”

Council person: “Your car was in the way. It should have been parked on the road.”

Me: “I moved it off the street as per your request to clear the road, and I only parked it in my driveway so that it wasn’t on the bitumen as you hadn’t given any indication on which roads were going to be resurfaced.”

Council person: “Then it should have been on a different road.”

The Council person was unable to provide any actual answers.

Me: “Which one? I don’t want to be in the way while you are resurfacing.”

Council: “Are you dumb?! If we are working on your street, maybe you could park on Smith Street.”

So that’s exactly what I did. Apparently that’s also what the three other people did who also got tickets.

Now, Smith Street has three patches of old bitumen, which council workers had to carefully resurface around the cars that were parked exactly where we were told.

The person could not have been more unclear.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this story.

It’s surprising they didn’t do this, too.

Not to get all technical or anything…

Here’s some great advice.

This is an excellent point.

What an unorganized project.

The notices should’ve been more clear and the officials should have been informed not to ticket cars in the meantime.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.