Welcome to the REAL WORLD

Aprox. 3-4 years ago I got a traffic ticket. (I had only had my license for a couple of months when this happened. I’m a better driver now.) I paid it, drove on and forgot about it. Last week is rose from the junkyard to haunt me. I am applying to jobs… and one of the job applications asks me to list any traffic violations within the last ten years where the fine was over 300 dollars. I cannot remember what I paid. I cannot remember exactly when it happened. I do not remember what I did with the docket number of the ticket.

Being a resourceful little student, I call the DMV: They can’t help me because the violation doesn’t appear on my record. Then I call the court where I paid the fine: They cannot help me because I don’t have a docket number. IF I HAD A DOCKET NUMBER I WOULDN’T NEED TO BE CALLING THEM!

So then I pull out the big guns: I hire my dad’s private investigator to get to the bottom of this. I need to know how much I paid; if it WAS over 300 and I don’t list it, the potential employer will do a background check and not hire me.

The private investigator gets back to me and says: Your records are in some berried file… It would take at least a week to get an answer. However, the infraction I think you commited is worth less than 200 bucks.

So I am saved. It just irritates the heck out of me that I can’t have access to my own records. They are MY records. Why couldn’t I have gotten them when I called? Why couldn’t the court lady have been a little more helpful? Hiring a private investigator, to investigate myself, is simply ridiculous.