Friday I  drove to Beverly Hills for a quick errand and blessedly found a parking place on the street, in front of my destination. And I had two quarters, which plus the 8 minutes already on the meter was enough to buy me the time I needed.

Except the quarters I dropped into the nifty new meter–the kind that also takes credit and ATM cards–didn’t register my coin of the realm, each with a picture of one of our fine states on the obverse.

So I called the number on the placard and told the lady at Beverly Hills Department of Public Works that the meter, #428, didn’t work.

People sometimes jam them.

she explained (Hey, wait? I used 4 bits! It’s not like all I had was euros!) and asked her to stay on the line with me while I popped in my credit card to see if that worked. Nope. And there was no error message either.

The meter now read 6 minutes and then dropped to 5. By the time I tried to complete the transaction, I had lost 4 minutes of the original 8, and told her that it seemed the meter was running a little fast, oh and BTW it didn’t want to take my credit card either and what should I do ensure I didn’t increase the city’s revenue by $60?

She said she would send a tech out. I thanked her, hung up and checked the call timer on my phone. It said said I had spent 2 minutes on the phone, not the fiscally fit for the city 5 minutes the meter now claimed.

Now that’s an income stream…