“There are some jobs where you need particularly thick skin.

In many modern Western countries, one of the worst is being a parking attendant or traffic warden. All day long it’s your job to give people parking tickets, to fine them for leaving cars where they shouldn’t. Over and over again motorists complain that it isn’t fair, that they were only there for a couple of minutes, that the attendant is picking on them. I wonder what it feels like, day after day, to be shouted at for doing your job.

Suppose the parking attendant was working for a government you hated and wanted to get rid of. Suppose the parking laws had been introduced quite recently and people who’d parked their cars in the same spot for years suddenly found themselves fined for doing it. Pity the attendant in that situation.”

- Mark for Everyone, 19