You just pull the handle and money pours out!

It's that simple.

Last week I was parking on main campus. They have a visitor lot near the science building that I frequent. Its got the centralized type of parking meters--you know where you have to remember your parking spot number, trudge across the lot to get a reciept that says you paid and then trudge back to your car to put it in the dash board. What drudgery!

I walked up to the meter and I was going to put $1.50 in because I was planning to be around for an hour and a half. Imagine my horror when I noticed that there were quarters jammed into the coin slot. Oh no! What was I supposed to do! I couldn't pay only $1.00 or I ran the risk of getting a ticket. I did what is usually the most reasonable thing to do in that sort of situation. I pounded on the coin return button and shook the machine. To my delight money started to pour into the receipt/coin return tray at the bottom of the parking meter. There was a lot of it too. So much that some of it even fell out of the tray and onto the ground.

There were some guys behind me so I tried to play it cool while I scooped up the money off the ground and from out of the coin tray and dropped it into my pocket. Good thing I was wearing a belt or the sheer weight of the quarters and dollar coins would have caused me some embarrassment in the World-Can-See-My-Underwear department.

HA! Take THAT parking meter! I'll see you again next week!