Ever pulled into a packed parking lot only to find the last open spot is blocked because of someone’s awful parking? Yeah. You know the feeling. Here are 10 stories about how people got back at someone for their horrible parking job. This content has been edited for clarity.
“Who Do You Think You Are?”
“I used to park in a public parking structure next to my office. It was open parking, but I always arrived around six a.m., so I tended to always park in the same spot, between a post and the end wall of the garage. I parked there for years in that exact spot other than maybe once a month when someone would be parked there I arrived, so I’d park in the next spot over.
One day, I was leaving work early for an appointment and someone had pulled in nose-forward with their bumper only an inch or so away from the end wall, thus blocking me in, but no one else.
There was a note on my windshield that said, ‘This garage does NOT have reserved parking. Time for you to park somewhere else!’
Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the double-parker was the mystery note leaver. I really needed to go and didn’t have time for that, so I immediately went to the parking office with a picture of the parking job. The manager looked up the plate number and said that they were a corporate customer, so they knew the company and the name, but didn’t have the person’s telephone number. I took to Google and got the company’s main number and rang it up, asking to talk to the person.
Reception forwarded me to her and she was quite shocked that I was able to track her down. I asked her to come move her vehicle immediately and she went off.
Again repeating, ‘There are no reserved spaces,’ and ‘Who do think you are to always take that spot,’ and ‘I’ll move my car when I’m good and ready!’
I was about to return the language when the garage manager gave me the cut signal. I covered the receiver even though she wouldn’t have heard anything over her screaming. He told me to hang up because he knew who she was and that she was always making trouble. She would always come into the office complaining about this or that. I hung up on her and he said he’d take care of it, but it would take an hour or so.
I told him that I had to leave because was late for an appointment and I’d just take a cab. He assured me that all will be well when I got back. Off I went and when I got back later, the parking office was closed, which was weird as they were normally still open at the time I returned. When I went to where my car was parked, as promised, I was no longer blocked in.
The next day, I again parked in my regular spot and headed straight to the parking office. The manager had a huge grin on his face. I thanked him for getting my car unblocked and asked him what the grin was about.
He had called the lady back after I left and told her she was in violation of the terms of parking and she had to move it immediately. He apparently got an earful like I had. He then proceeded to call the company back to inform them that he was revoking her parking pass for violating the parking rules. Then he slapped a 77-dollar parking ticket on her windshield and called the tow truck. The tow truck got there and towed the woman’s car away before she came to get it. The manager saw her walk into the garage shortly after the tow truck left, so he decided it was a good day to close the office early and let the after-hours service let her know where her car was.
I was laughing so hard that by the time he finished telling me what he did I had tears streaming down my face.”
The Last Drive
“Many years ago, I was asked to drive my wife into town to do some Christmas shopping. As some of the parcels were quite large, I decided to take my Citroen CX estate car, although it was nearly at the end of its life and was due to be scrapped in a couple of weeks.
On arriving in town, the only place I could find to park was a temporary car park on a small piece of waste ground. All the cars were jammed in with only a narrow aisle between rows. Off we went and two hours later arrived back and loaded the car with presents.
Just as my wife and myself were to drive out of the park, a young man in an old, beat up Ford turned into the aisle and stopped. I climbed out of our car and walked up to him with the intention of letting him know that if he backed up to let me out, he could park in the empty slot.
He probably expected me to shout at him for blocking us in or something similar because as I approached, he leaned out of his window and subjected me to a tirade of abuse. Amongst the swearing was the message that he didn’t care if he blocked in the whole carpark. Everyone could wait until he returned and hard luck to them. I have served in the Army and worked in Oil Fields for many years but I have never heard such a foul mouth. I was angry that my wife had been able to hear every word.
I quietly walked back to my car, engaged gear, and rammed the idiot. As I had T boned his car at a pretty respectable speed, the side of the Ford crumpled, jamming both doors. He had to sit inside his wrecked car as I continued to push the car clear of the aisle. As soon as there was enough space, I drove past, leaving him trapped inside his wrecked car.
I expected to be pulled over by the police all the way home, but to this day nothing has happened. The front of my CX was scratched and dented but its last drive was more than memorable.”
I’ll Move It For Ya
“I have had two bad parking instances. The first one happened maybe 45 years ago. I was still living at home and our driveway was a quarter mile long with a bridge about halfway up it. People would sometimes hunt on our neighbor’s land. In order to get there, you had to drive down our driveway and cross the bridge, then park on their land. This was okay with us until one particular day.
I was about to leave for work when a fellow who was hunting came out of the woods and got in his car to leave. As he got to the bridge, a rabbit ran across the driveway so he jumped out of his car with his pump action to chase after it, leaving his car in the middle of the bridge. I was coming down the driveway and asked if he could please move his car so I could get to work. He told me I could wait until he tried to get the rabbit, then he disappeared into the woods.
I drove back up to our house and got our tractor and chain, came back, and hooked the chain to his car. When I got on the tractor and started it up, the guy came running out of the woods yelling and screaming at me. I unhooked the chain and went to have a talk with our neighbor. They told me they wouldn’t let him hunt on their land anymore.
The second instance happened about five years ago. I drive a heavy-duty truck. At a local shopping center, I was backing into a parking spot. A guy in a Cadillac quickly spun in and pulled into the same spot, causing me to almost back into his car.
I told him I was backing into that spot and (in terms I will not use here) he essentially said too bad, he was already in the spot and not going to move. He and his wife got out and went into the store. After they were in the store, I backed up to the car, took out a chain, and helped him move his car to the middle of the parking lot. I decided I really didn’t have to go shopping that bad and left. I bet he sure was surprised when he came back out and had to look for his car.”
Tinker Toy Car
“My car wasn’t quite double parked, but definitely blocked in. Back in high school, I drove a tiny Chevy Sprint. I was teased that I drove a tinker toy car with a lot of questions of where the wind-up key was. Ha, ha. I had a car at 16, so who cared?
It was summer and I had to make up a class so I drove to a sibling high school to make up the course. The student parking lot was tiny, so space was a premium. Again, the jokes that my car shouldn’t take up a whole space were made and laughed at. Whatever. One day, however, I came out after class and had to jet home because I had a deal with my mom to run errands in exchange for the car. My mother was an extreme stickler on time and knew how long it should take me to get home. I didn’t want to walk in the summer heat, so I was dutiful.
I came out to find my car not where I left it. Confused, I searched the entire lot at a run, as I had stopped to chat with someone in the next class session. At the far corner, the corner with inset poles for motorcycles was my tiny car. That’s when I recognized a friend-of-a-friend’s car where my car should have been.
I raced back into the building, ran over a pastor who remembered me from elementary school, and busted into the guy’s classroom. Half the class was laughing until I started screaming. I yelled that my mom was timing me and would take NO excuse for tardiness and that whichever idiots moved my car better move it out so that I could get home before my mother showed up. I was not going to take her wrath alone.
The class went silent. Then five guys bolted out the door to move my car. I had gone to two different elementary schools and knew most of the people in two different high schools. My mom was infamous for being tiny and scary. People swore she was ten feet tall when she was angry. No one wanted her angry at them. Meanwhile, the priest I ran over went to his office and told my mom what happened. They apparently had a good chuckle over it, and when I got home and raced to explain, she just smiled.
The next morning, she drove me to class. It was SO humiliating for my 16-year-old self. She then asked me which boys touched my car. When I pointed the group out, one saw me pointing. He noticed my mom and freaked out, yelling at everyone that she was here. The lot got quiet and the group scattered. My mom smiled rather evilly, got back in the car, and drove home. Looking back, it was worthy of the ‘Three Stooges’ in the guys’ klutzy escape from a tiny 5′1″ woman.”
You Were Asking For It
“I really wish I still had the pictures. I parked in a parking garage for work. I had become friends with the staff after fixing their computer one day so they helped a lot with this issue. I had an assigned space near the elevator because I was an IT tech and sometimes had to drive to other offices in the area. On a regular basis, I would get blocked in by a service company truck. I would call the number on the truck, they would radio the driver, and they would move pretty quickly. One day, the delay finally caught up to me.
I got a new boss who was a time-watching zealot! He complained about it taking me an extra 30 minutes anytime I had to drive to another office. I explained the problem to him and he complained to the garage manager. The garage manager complained to the service company manager. Did this change anything? Nope. So things started to escalate.
The next time it happened, my boss told me to only call the garage manager, so I did. The garage crew brought up two floor jacks and wheel dollies. They wheeled the truck in-between two pillars so there was no way it could be driven out. I got lucky and saw the guy come out of the elevator to see the truck.
I got to hear him ticked off on the phone with his boss, ‘Some @$#&!!! moved my truck between pillars.’
It cost his company 150 dollars for the ticket from the garage and 300 dollars from the tow truck company to come drag the truck out. My boss, the garage manager, the crew, and I spent the next hour laughing. They never blocked spaces again.”
Girl Boss
“Last week, my company was slowly returning to working in person. We were being careful by distancing and wearing masks and nitrile gloves at all times while on the property. Last Thursday, I went into the office, parked my car in space 23, and spent about three hours there. When I left to go to lunch, someone had parked a great big pickup truck blocking spaces 20–23. I went in and recited the number over the PA system asking the owner to come to my office. Nothing.
It is a private parking lot only for the use of people working for the company. It didn’t have a sticker on it indicating they were an employee so I had the truck towed. As the tow truck was leaving, a large guy came running from the park about half a block away screaming that I couldn’t have his truck towed. I nodded at the tow truck driver and he went away towing the truck.
The guy told me he would have me fired and I would never work again because he was best friends with the owner. Why can’t idiots understand that a little old lady in a denim mask, gloves, and a t-shirt might own the company and the parking lot? I shrugged and went to lunch.
When I came back and went into my office from the hall, my clerk called and said there was a guy who wanted to file a complaint about an employee. He came in saw me and said ‘dang it’ and turned and walked out.”
‘I Didn’t Like The Way You Smiled At Me’
“I came out of the grocery store and found that my car was blocked by a car with a woman sitting in it. I thought she was just waiting for a moment, so I loaded my groceries into my car and took the cart to the cart corral, expecting she would be gone by the time I got back.
As I approached my car, I noticed the woman was still blocking it, so I thought I’d wait a few more moments for her to leave. Perhaps three minutes went by and nothing happened, so I went up to her window and asked if she could move her car so that I could pull out. She said she was waiting for another car to pull out of its parking space so she could park there. I said okay and waited a few more minutes. As there seemed to be no movement or driver in the car she said she expected to move, I asked if she could simply pull up a few feet so I could leave. She refused.
At that point, I was getting confused and annoyed. I explained that I just wanted to leave; all she needed to do was move her car a few feet. She refused.
I said, ‘Look, do I need to get the policeman?’ as there was a patrol car at the other end of the lot.
She said, ‘Go ahead.’
I walked over to the patrol car and it turned out the patrolman was occupied with another matter. I saw the parking lot attendant and asked if he could intervene. He was nice enough to talk to her for me. After a few minutes, she moved.
I couldn’t help myself – I asked her why she didn’t want to move.
She said, ‘I didn’t like the way you smiled at me.’
I kid you not.”
Private Property
“I actually blocked an unknown vehicle in our assigned parking space. I came home from work to find a vehicle parked in our spot that has our apartment number in 12 inch letters. I tapped my horn, then blew my horn, then laid on my horn to no avail. I blocked it in and went inside to take a shower.
An hour later, my fiancee’ and her mom arrived home. We discussed the vehicle and went to dinner leaving it blocked in. Two hours later, we returned to see a woman talking to a police officer by that vehicle. We parked and walked up. They asked if that was my vehicle.
‘Yes it is,’ I said.
‘You can’t do this, you cannot block someone’s vehicle in!’ said the officer.
The woman started speaking but I ignored her. I explained that she parked in my parking spot that was in my lease, so I paid for the spot monthly and can most certainly block a vehicle in. The officer asked if I would move it and I said yes as my wife walked up to speak her mind. The officer told her she needed to step back as she had been drinking and he could smell it.
‘Well, Officer,’ I say, ‘That’s my breath you smell, she is sober and so maybe she should move my van.’
‘While I am not going to give you a ticket for this, I could!’ he exclaimed.
Jose Cuervo had me saying, ‘Well if you did, I would ask you to call your supervisor out.’
After that one, he decided he was going to give me a ticket after all. When the Sergeant arrived, he coached me on the dangers of my behavior and I of course agreed as he wouldn’t let the officer ticket me on private property. The officer was ticked. It felt good to prove him wrong.”
Should We Call The Police?
“I have blocked in cars by double parking at a local business. The reason why is that I am disabled with multiple medical issues, one of which is that I cannot walk very far without constant pain. As a disabled pensioner, I am allowed the privilege to park in disabled spots. I get very annoyed when I cannot get a free disability space due to inconsiderate people incorrectly taking up the spaces (able bodied people with no disability permit).
Every so often, I find someone who has parked in the disabled spot at this business without a disability parking permit. Fortunately, this car park is set up with ample space around the disabled parking area so I can double park and block in the illegally parked vehicle without causing any problem to other people. The business owner knows me and what I do, so whenever the offending driver comes in to complain, instead of looking for me, he just puts a call out over the loudspeaker.
Luckily, the front of the business has large windows overlooking the car space so I can keep an eye on what they do while I complete what I came for, which sometimes takes me quarter of an hour or more. When I do come out, I get abused by the other driver. Their usual story is that they were only going to be five minutes, but the parking sign does not mention anything about five-minute parking. It clearly states it is for the sole use of those with disability permits.
I always simply suggest we call the police to find out who is in the wrong and get them fined after explaining the error of their ways. This works like a charm. They never want to call the police because they know they are wrong and I never see the same car parked there again!”
Entitled Mom
“I live directly behind a charter school. Because it is on a main road, parents drop off and pick up their kids on the street I live on. In the past, I had tons of issues with parents either parking in my driveway (at least once) or parking so that my driveway was blocked (more times than I could count).
One day, I walked out of my house so that I could pick my boys up from school only to discover a car blocking at least half of my driveway. There was no way I could pull out. Someone was in the car so I went up to them to tell them to move. The person in the passenger seat not only claimed they had no key and could not drive, but their English was not good. My neighbor walked over and told me he had tried to talk to the mother who had left the car but had been unable to stop her as she dashed onto school grounds. He’d gotten no further with the remaining occupant than I did.
I was ready to go call the police when the entitled mom finally returned. I told her she could not block my driveway and that I had places to be.
Her excuse was, ‘I had to pick up my boys!’
Apparently, she had a right to keep me from picking up my boys because she had to pick up hers. She didn’t listen to me and I was ticked off. The one thing I can thank Covid for is I don’t have that parking headache anymore.
By the way, it is illegal to block driveways and is trespassing if you park in someone’s driveway without their permission. The school has told the parents multiple times not to block our driveways. I know because my son went to that school and they sent flyers home with the students multiple times to remind them not to. That and the school staff had come out to assist me when someone was blocking or using my driveway.”
