LA City Traffic Impound system is run by Voldemort

In about 5 months, society thinks I will have enough of my life together to be a functioning member of society. That's not true. I let my car get towed yesterday.
My first day back in Los Angeles I saw a little flier warning that on the 14th, the street would be refinished, so cars were not allowed to be parked there. I took note of this, and immediately forgot about it.

The morning/afternoon of the 14th, I decided to get a burrito for lunch. Outside, I saw a freshly paved and coned-off street. Then the realization that that was exactly where my car had been. Had the city merely moved my car out of the way, that would have been quite nice. Sadly, it had been taken from me: location unknown. The burrito could wait - the car was mission priority number one.

A little internet sorcery revealed that LA was a large city, so the car could conceivably be in many locations. I called some government numbers and bounced around the switchboard for 30-odd minutes until I received THE MAGIC NUMBER. The employee assured me that the people behind this number would tell me where my car was.

So I called the magic number, and got an automated voice machine. I can press 2 to ... basically the number two will direct me to everything bad one can possibly do with a vehicle, likely including the (intentional or otherwise) running over of members of the opposite sex. I have no choice.
beep beep. Repeat that sound for fifteen minutes. Not even a "please stay on the line, your call is important to us" - it's not. They do not give a flying fuck about me and only want to see me go away, so they're doing everything in their power to ensure I do. Even doing what feels like an aggressive form of ignoring me.

Of course there's a "rotary phone" exception. Does anybody still have a rotary phone? If you do, I'm pretty sure you're too old to drive. I pretended that I had a rotary phone. "one moment please" the traffic voice genie said. This was promising.
beep-beep
DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT AND A FURTHER DAMMIT.

Far be it from me to suggest that former Nazis or some other group of unquestionable evil is behind the impound lot system. However, it is a distinct possibility that the people who run the impound system hang out in the same circles as these Nazis and Voldemort-worshipers; they probably read the same periodicals and have discussions on the newest forms of psychological abuse and torment.

Of course, the people behind this could also have families and children. If they do, I believe they're horrible parents - the sort who promise their children ice cream, but instead take them to the dentists office, even on occasions when a routine checkup isn't medically necessary.

Sometimes, there's a hidden backdoor built into phone systems. Saying words like "agent" or "operator" will get you a live human. I tried that. I also tried "I know the mayor". No dice.

Twenty five minutes of beep-beep later, I got a hold of a real person. I would not let them go. I told them everything I possibly could. It was like Stockholm syndrome. I loved them. I was afraid they'd leave me with the beep again, but they gave me answers. They directed me to another number. The wrong number. I called LA DOT again. More beep-beep. Then, inexplicably after about a mere FIVE minutes, another live human who gave me another number.
Another wrong number. At this point, it became clear that they had no clue where the car was. They were just giving me random tow companies, many of whom were nowhere near where my car was towed from. One of them was in France, I think.

I resorted to asking the tow companies themselves who they thought might have it, because corporations actually care about people a little bit. After a couple rounds of pass the buck, I located my car. Indiana Jones would be proud.

Just over 260 dollars and 3 hours of my time later, and I was able to get my car. All because I wanted a burrito. A burrito which turned out to be not very good. There's a lesson in this somewhere, I'm sure.