I’ve just spent 11 days in the beautiful south of Portugal, the Algarve. In the city of Tavira, we encountered this nugget of fail:
Parking tickets on thermal paper
Parking tickets made of thermal paper, in a country where temperatures frequently go over 30° C (86° F). This means that after two or three hours in the sun, it’s impossible to read them. I’d love to meet the genius who considered this to be a good idea.
Daniel Rodrigues
Glad you liked it here in Portugal.
C’mon, that’s so no police officer can fine you even if you don’t comply with the parking timeframe. That was a measure pro consumer, thinking outside the box at its best ;)
Evan
The problem is the quality of the thermal paper. The location you parked at seems to have decided to use cheap thermal paper instead of something more appropriate for the application. Most locations use paper that can last at least several days, possibly weeks, on the dashboard of a car when the outside temperature is over 40° C, and significantly warmer inside of the car.
My guess is that the location you parked at used paper intended for receipts… The paper used for parking is generally quite thick (between about 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm)… several times thicker than is typically used for receipts. Does your paper feel thin? If so, it was probably really not intended for what they are using it for.
Ruben
Great to have someone with experience commenting! The paper feels pretty sturdy but it has been sitting in the camera bag for a while.
The wrong paper with a very hot car sounds like a plausible explanation. The curious thing is that I saw this on multiple occasions. Definitely not the case of someone incorrectly refilling the machine due to a hangover.
bert hubert
http://bert-hubert.blogspot.com/2010/04/few-notes-on-procurement.html may explain how this happened.
Ruben
Love the picture!
Jesus Cristo
beautiful south
All the south and the entire coastal line are being morphed into tourist pleasure centres. So long for the true natural sights we had.
David
Well, I’m Portuguese and I didn’t know about that problem.
How many tickets you took?
How many of them where black?
XD I’m curious.
Kephas
That only proves that the engineer didn’t agree with the “parking ticket concept” :)
spac fonseca
Like someone said…: “don’t worrie, be happy”
Antonio Neto
Hello!
I’m Portuguese and i couldn’t ressist sharing anhothe “pearl” with you guys…
How about the fisherman’s license (emitted by atm’s) which is printed (also) over thermal paper.
There are (fisherman’s) story’s of licence checking by autorities, and when they reach for the paper, it’s all black… (i try to immagine theyr faces)
Solution? : They make a photocopy of the document in the ealy days.
Pedro Neves
Ruben,
The guy who invented this is off course a Genius for portuguese “way of life”, so that you only need to pay the first day of your stay… the rest of the days you place the unreadable ticket and “you’re off”!
Shamefully THAT is the way of thinking in Portugal… I say shamefulll because I am portuguese and have to live with it everyday!
Glad you liked your stay and do come back… we have also other great stuff :)