When you get home from a long day at work the last thing you want to deal with is some bozo in your parking spot. These drivers share how they got even on the fool who took their spot.
Don’t Mess With A Guy Who Owns A Tow Truck
“At my house, I have two driveways: the main driveway where the garage is, and a secondary driveway on the side of my house. I park my truck on the secondary driveway because my primary driveway was pretty short and my truck was long so its tail end would stick out on the sidewalk. I had these neighbors and their 40-something plus-year-old son still lived at home. This guy was a real piece of work, a big-time loser, in and out of jail all the time, an addict, and just an all-around Irritating person to look at. He had this lowlife girlfriend that used to come over and she/he always park in front of my fracking driveway, blocking my truck. I asked nicely several times to not block my truck, it’s my work truck, and when I get a call which happens all the time I run out to a job.
After asking a couple of times nice I told him to stop blocking my drive or I’ll drag that car out in the main street and leave it in the suicide lane. So this schmuck parks his car right in front of my driveway again so I go out with my other truck wrap a chain around his axle attached to my tow ball, drag it out into the middle of Hillsdale Avenue which was a four-lane road unhitched it, called the cops, and reported an abandoned vehicle in the middle of Hillsdale.
Then I sat on my front porch with an ice-cold drink to watch the show. By the time he realizes the car is not there anymore The cops and tow truck have arrived and started hooking up the vehicle. This dipstick runs out there to try and convince the cop not to take it so the cops ask who he is, run his name finds out he has warrants, and hooks him up for a little vacation. Now if California wasn’t such a lenient state and the guy actually did his full bid that idiot would’ve been out of my hair for five years. Still, one year is better than nothing.”
Just A Little Football Rivalry
“When I was at OU for my freshman year I was not able to get tickets for the OU Nebraska game so I slept in intending to run some errands and listen to the game on the radio. When I got up there were two cars parked in my driveway and three on my lawn. All had Nebraska plates. I was blocked in so I called a friend. We went to the hardware store picked up some cinder blocks and some chains and some locks.
When the game was over there were five cars sitting on cinder blocks and five sets of tires stacked and sitting in my garage, locked and chained. I ‘sold’ those tires back to the owners for $75 a set. I did not loan them my floor jack or impact wrench. On that, they were on their own. To make things even sweeter Nebraska got their butts kicked that game.”
Follow The Rules. Simple As That.
“Where I live, there’s a parking area for residents who live on our block. Neighbors a bit away, seem to think they can park there. After contacting our local council, they sent out letters to these people explaining that the parking spaces were allocated, specifically for people resident in our block.
I came home from the night shift to find no spaces, but one of the ‘other neighbors’ (who’d had a letter from the council asking her not to park there) had parked in one of our spaces. I simply parked my car so it was blocking her in. Had my regular cup of tea, then went to bed. Around 10 am, the wife wakes me saying there’s this woman at the door claiming your car is blocking her in. I told her to tell her I’m in bed after a long night shift and to come back around 4 pm. 10 minutes later this woman is banging furiously on our door. I got up, put some underwear on, and answered the door.
I told her, I’d just finished a stretch of four, 12-hour night shifts and wanted to sleep. Come back later and I will move my car. She said something about me making her late for work. I told her, she’d had a letter from the council telling her politely not to park there, which she had chosen to ignore, so take it up with the council. Told her to catch a bus if she was that worried about work and explain to her employers that she ignored a council directive not to park her car there, told her if she knocked on my door again, I would not answer it, but would now sleep till 6 pm. Closed the door and went back to bed. She hasn’t parked there for the past 2.5 years.”
Read The Sign!
“The place I used to work had two parking garages. Garage 1 was attached to the office building and was reserved parking only. Garage 2 was one city block away. That garage was for the employees who didn’t have reserved parking spaces. Both garages were closed to the public, so employees having to compete for parking with the general public wasn’t a thing.
Some people who had to park in garage 2 got into the habit of ‘patrolling’ garage 1 around mid-to late-afternoon looking for empty parking spaces to park in. The logic was if a parking space was empty within a couple of hours of 5:00 then the person whose space it was must have already left for the day, so the spot was ‘free.’
Well, they didn’t take into consideration that there are a lot of reasons someone might not be parked in their space that late in the day, but would still be returning to the office. Maybe they had an afternoon meeting, maybe they had a doctor’s appointment, maybe they work flex time and their lunch hour is 2:00 to 3:00.
I worked flex time and was often away from the office from about 2:30 to 3:30. I got very, very tired of coming back to work and finding someone else’s car in my reserved space. It got to the point that it was happening multiple times per week.
So, I printed out a whole bunch of ‘You’re in my space’ signs. They weren’t anything fancy, just 8 1/2 x 11 copy paper. I made the font big enough that the message filled the page. They said:
‘I don’t appreciate your parking in my reserved parking space. For future reference:
Mondays, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. – This is not your parking space.
Tuesdays, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. – This is not your parking space.
Wednesdays, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. – This is not your parking space.
Thursdays, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. – This is not your parking space.
Fridays, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. – This is not your parking space.
Thank you.’
I kept a big stack of the signs in my car, along with a couple of rolls of heavy-duty packing tape. When I would find someone in my parking space I would plaster every glass surface on the car with the signs. I made sure not to let anything touch the paint or anything that could be damaged by the tape. When I say plastered, I mean plastered. Depending on the size of the car, I might put four of them on one side window; 8 – 12 on the windshield; however many the rear window would hold. There was no way they would be able to drive the car without first removing all of the signs.
Irritating, but it doesn’t take that long just to rip paper signs off your car. That’s why I used packing tape and made sure to smooth every single piece of tape with my fingernail so there were no air bubbles and no corners/borders that were loose or sticking up, no single piece of tape overlapped another. In other words, I made sure they couldn’t just rip the tape off; they would probably have to use a razor blade to remove all the tape and its residue, and it was going to eat up a significant amount of their time.
I think I had to do that three times before word got out not to mess with space #XYZ. No one ever parked in my space again.”
Well That’s How You Scare Somebody Away From Your Spot
“At a place I worked, we had assigned parking. This is a small country town on the outskirts. My cow of a coworker was too lazy to park in her space, so she took mine. Mind you, I didn’t mind walking. It was the principle. If she would have asked, I would have traded. After numerous times of asking, I hatched a plan. She was terrified of spiders. To the point, she left work a few times when she saw them inside.
It was coming on spring, things are breeding and hatching… in casual conversation, I told her I couldn’t wait to see the spiders, bugs, and other assorted wildlife showing back up again. I love all of this stuff and was truly excited. I went on and on for days. Then dropped that there was a spider nest really close to the building, and I loved seeing the spiders crawl over my car. I then proceeded to make some tiny ‘spiders’ from yarn, and place some on her car.
She goes to leave, and I hear an ear-piercing shriek, as she runs in and grabs me, screaming there are spiders all over her car. Now, if you got close, you could tell they were little bits of yarn, but no way would she get close enough. I told her I’d remove the ‘spiders’, which I did. I told her she was good to go, but some may have got inside. She literally had her husband come get her car and drove his from then on. Oh, she never parked in my space again.”
This One Crazy Trick Kept The Bad Parkers Away
“I am not proud of this, but I am also not ashamed. Neutral, I guess. After many failed attempts to address the issue diplomatically, I developed a ‘solution.’
Folks who were not PAYING tenants with leases would constantly park in tenant-only lots at my college apartment complex. Oftentimes, residents had to park blocks away and walk to get home. This was particularly fun at night. Girls had been assaulted. One male tenant was stabbed. I was once followed home by a very large man wearing a monster mask of some kind. ‘No, you’re not good enough,’ he said multiple times. No clue what that meant and I zig-zagged around the neighborhood for an hour in an attempt to lose him. I reported it but had no information to offer authorities besides his approximate build, height and deep voice. I blew off classes and stayed in bed for the following week as I was too terrified to leave the apartment.
I was very angry about the parking situation.
Tenants received parking passes for their windows. It was easy to spot the alien vehicles during the day, and as for any tenants who forgot to display their passes, well, l hope they learned a valuable lesson. I have no reason to believe that I ever applied my solution to a fellow tenant’s car in error. I hope I didn’t. I WOULD feel bad about that.
Nails are relatively cheap and easy to carry around in a bookbag. I was able to push one or two into each tire most of the time. There must not have been cameras as we were told because I was never caught in the act.
I did not hunt for the cars. I just applied the solution when the ‘opportunity’ presented itself.
It sometimes resulted in an offender being parked in a tenant spot for longer, but I rarely noticed cars repeat the infraction after receiving my treatment. Perhaps some did. I don’t know.
Wouldn’t do it again. Still don’t feel bad. My roommates and I were down to allow a guest to crash on the couch for a day or two here and there, but no parking in our lots! If you didn’t pay, you didn’t park. We mostly hosted folks who did not have cars or parked outside of the complex and entered during the day. If the nighttime walk was unavoidable, at least one of us would have a guest pick us up so nobody had to make the trek alone. I came up with some creative self-defense tools and I felt relatively safe when I was not alone.
I lived on Top Ramen and hard, stinky sink water most of the time to make my rent. I earned my tenant parking.”
Too Close For Comfort!
“My ex-boyfriend was very precious about his car. He was always very careful about where he parked – never next to a car that had a child seat in it and never next to a car that was dented. Parallel parking if possible, or at ends of rows so he only had one car next to him. All very sensible.
But sometimes he would go a bit over the top with his obsession, and he would even rent a car so that he didn’t have to take his own car and potentially park it in an unknown car park! We would tease him gently about it and he would take it in good faith and laugh at himself.
Shortly after we broke up, he went to visit some friends of mine for a party – he was only staying a short while. They weren’t too happy about the way he treated me but were willing to accept it and not be rude to him. They had a driveway that took three large cars, but when he parked, he took up so much space but he actually took up the space of two cars. In his mind, he was being careful so nobody parked close enough to dent his doors. However, he knew a number of other people were coming to the party as well and would be wanting to park. So very inconsiderate.
I, and my friends, knew him well enough to know he would have understood what he was doing.
When the next guest arrived they found they couldn’t park in the third space. They mentioned it to my friend. She couldn’t find my ex, so she helped the lady park her car and squeezed it in just between his car and her car that was already parked there. It was so close that neither my ex nor the guest would have been able to get in through the driver’s door – and of course, he would be worried about door dents as the driver’s door would have had to hit his car to let the person out. (He wouldn’t have known that my friend drove her car out and back in again, so the guest could get out the wrong side of her car!).
When my ex appeared to take his leave, he mentioned in ‘all innocence’ (!) ‘ I hope I didn’t take up too much space when I parked my car’. My friend said ‘no, there was no problem, the other guest had managed to park a car perfectly alright in between the two cars.’ She said she thought his face went a bit ashen and he hurriedly made an exit!
We never know what he made of it and he must’ve climbed in through the passenger’s side. …But whenever he has visited them since then, he has always parked on the main road, even if there was lots of space in her car park! I have a little giggle every time I visit them!”
Let’s Be Sensible Here
“I was pulling our handicapped wheelchair accessible 3/4 ton van into a parking space in front of the restaurant area. A small blue open sedan cut us off and parked, so I hit the brakes hard, or else the convertible would have been mushed. The four young women jumped out, danced around, and ran inside.
I pulled up sideways behind them. I got out, I am also handicapped so the speed is not my forte. I walked around and began to loosen our child’s wheelchair safety straps. I was beginning to get his chair onto the lift when the woman came out.
‘What the heck do you think you are doing? Get out of here right now! You are blocking my car in!’
There was more but you get the gist.
I let them know we were going inside to have lunch. It has been a long drive and we need a rest and a break.
More fine words from the young women, their manners are getting worse and vocabulary doing the same. I suggested they call the police and have me ticketed, maybe even arrested. My voice was low and slow, the same as when I was an engineer or a manager.
They ran inside and returned with the manager. They are waving their arms around, pointing at us, all sorts of excited. He looked at them, the handicap spot, my child in the lift being brought down, my accessories attached to me, my handicap license plate, my placards, and their lack of. He looked at them, shook his head, and went back inside.
The young women asked what they were going to do. I said to have a drink, we’re having lunch and won’t be here long.
We left after fifteen minutes. We had a long drive ahead of us and we do need to refresh ourselves and grab a bite every couple of hours.”
Parking Karma
“I am not a vengeful person but I HAVE seen a few interesting reactions to just that. One time, I saw an elderly man trying to get into the last handicapped parking spot at the Walgreens lot I was in. Just before he was to turn into it a man in his 50s with no placard to park there zipped into that spot. He went quickly and directly into the store. It just so happened that there was a local hangout for police on shift changes in the same lot as that Walgreens.
The police there met about an hour before their shift to go over their daily briefings and/or reports but sit out front at times on some of the outside tables. One such officer saw him cut in on the elderly man (who did have a placard hanging in his window) and walked over 50 ft. to Walgreens. He watched the elderly man park a few rows deep in the lot and then went to his car trunk. He pulled out a tire boot and locked it onto the front driver’s tire as to be seen by the driver when he gets in the car to leave. The officer then sat back at that table about 50 ft away.
He pulled out a ticket book and started to write one up. As the man came out with a bag of prescriptions, he looked at the boot and started cussing out loud not knowing where the boot came from at the time. He spun around in a full 360 looking for a police car when he realized after he spun past them and focused in on the now two cruisers parked, and now had three officers sitting and looking over at the driver with the boot. When he saw them, he started being rude to them asking why are they picking on him for being in a spot for ‘five minutes’ and also saying that no one even would have used it in the time period he had. That’s when all three of them got up and walked over to him asking him ‘What seemed to be the problem?’
He snarled, ‘You know what is wrong. FIX IT.’ The two officers behind the one who asked the question looked at each other with a smirk but said nothing. The one engaging answered his ‘FIX IT’ demand by responding kindly to him. He said ‘Yes sir, you are right. I do need to fix this for you. Here hold this for a minute.’ He handed him a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot and on it had a business card with Joe’s Towing on it.
In the description he had written on the ticket said ‘To get the boot removed call Joe’s’ When the man looked up turning red, the officer continues stating ‘They will come out and do that for you for a minimum of $75.00 but sometimes it can be up to $150.00 depending on how you talk to them. They have the keys. I don’t. I wouldn’t recommend holding on to your current attitude when you call Joe’s. It could get expensive. The man saw the price now on the ticket apparently because I heard him yell ‘$125.00 for five minutes?’
He kicked the boot which hurt his toes/foot and cussed himself out for hurting himself more than just in the wallet. At this point, the elderly man finally came out of Walgreens to which the officer smiled and waved to the man walking past them. I ended up leaving at that point with them still there. I still wonder to this day if that old man even knew that the guy getting that ticket was because of him getting cut off. I hoped so for the fact he could share the story with other seniors that the police really do care and will act when they see a wrong like that done.”
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