Contrary to popular belief, student employees of the KU Parking Department aren’t the bad guys, skulking around the parking lots looking for tickets to write for their sheer, narcissistic pleasure. They’re simply students like you and me doing something they get paid to do and trying to make their way through school at the same time. So before you start blaming them for whatever you find questionable with the department, take a step back, suck in some fresh air and put down your Louisville Slugger.

As I waited in the cool lobby to bother Alan Bloomquist, Washington senior, by tagging along with him during one of his shifts out in the field, a small Asian woman walked up to the front desk, obviously heated. She had received a parking ticket and explained that she most definitely had the right to park where she did. The desk worker calmly pulled out a pamphlet containing all the information about parking zones and explained that she had, in fact, parked illegally and that she would need to pay. Still angry, the woman left with nothing but her unpaid ticket and a ding in her pride.

Bloomquist showed up a few minutes later and we walked around a couple of the parking lots, finding numerous violations. As he was punching in the information for an expired meter, a hurried woman came running up just before he had finished. She explained she had been paying all morning and that she was just about to leave. Since he hadn’t finished printing the ticket he had no qualms about letting her go unscathed.

We continue around to various lots—one man stops us to inform Bloomquist that a girl had parked in a handicap space with a suspect handicap tag—into some of the smaller, less used spaces. After patrolling these lots for four years since coming to KU from Central Washington, Bloomquist knows when something is out of place.

“It’s those little things that you pick up on. All these cars here are faculty, and I see them every day. You can generally tell the difference between the student and faculty cars,” he says.

We talk for a while about his experiences through the years and he says that they have been pretty good. The job, he says, is probably the best one he’s had because of the flexibility with his schedule. After finishing up the round and saying our good-byes I have to say that Bloomquist is a pretty nice; much nicer than all the bad things said about the so-called “parking Nazis” seemed to suggest.

The Facebook group “The KU Parking Department is evil” was started by 2007 graduate Britt Burns. The group, he says, is mostly a way for members to jokingly vent about their frustration with the parking department and the parking situation on campus. Britt says that he isn’t annoyed with the ticket writers themselves, but more about the way the department conducts its business.

“It would be nice if the parking department tried to make student life less stressful instead of more frustrating.  They are such an important and unavoidable part of KU and I wish they used their power to try to help students rather than take advantage of them,” he says.

Burns says the group is not intended to lash out at those in the field writing tickets, but to stand up for a change in policy that would benefit students—such as decreasing prices for parking permits—instead of hindering them.

Parking and Transit director Donna Hultine has definitely seen her share of outraged students. From stories of her student ticket writers encountering hostility in the form of baseball bats to attempts of vehicular battery, she’s heard it all. Although she takes responsibility overall for the department, she says that the people on the front lines end up taking the brunt of the rage. One notable instance involved a ticket writer getting backed into by an angry person trying to save their car from being towed. Luckily, the ticket writer was not seriously injured.

“It takes a special person to do this job,” she says. “You gotta have confidence to do it because you’re vulnerable out there.”

Though there have been many reports of hostility inflicted upon ticket writers, Hultine says that it’s more the exception than the rule.

So next time you get a ticket, try not to be so mad. Sure, you might have to pay a fine and yeah, it sucks. But don’t take it out on the ticket writers or front desk workers. They’re just people doing their job, for better or worse.