Hit the road, Jack. These car owners tell how they reacted after someone else has blocked them in. Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time. Content has been edited for clarity.
Road Blocked
“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 I 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. Then they would radio the driver and they would move pretty quickly.
But, the delay finally caught up to me.
I had a new boss who was a time-watching zealot.
He complained about it taking me an extra thirty 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.
Had this changed anything? Nope. So, it was time to escalate.
The next time it happened my boss told me to only call the garage manager.
So, I did.
And this is what happened.
The garage crew brought up two-floor jacks and wheel dollies. They wheeled the truck in between two pillars. No way it could be driven out.
I was lucky and saw the guy come out of the elevator to see the truck.
I got to hear him yell at his boss, ‘Some inconsiderate person moved my truck between pillars.’
It cost his company one hundred and fifty dollars for the ticket from the garage, and three hundred dollars from the tow truck company to come to drag the truck out. They didn’t have the wheel dollies.
My boss, the garage manager, and crew, and I spent the next hour laughing.
They didn’t block spaces anymore.”
Road Rage
“It was not quite double-parked.
But I was definitely blocked in. Long ago, back in high school, I drove a tiny Chevy Sprint. I was teased because I drove a tinker toy car and people asked a lot of questions like where the wind-up key was.
Ha, ha. I had a car at sixteen, so who cared?
It was summer and I had to make up a class. So, I drove to a sibling’s 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 have taken up a whole space were made and laughed at.
Whatever.
One day, however, I came out after class and had to get home.
I had a deal with my mom to drive errands in exchange for the car. My mother was an extreme stickler for being on time and knew how long it should have taken 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. I had stopped to chat with someone in the next class session. At the far corner, the corner with inset poles for the motorcycles, there 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 catholic 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 pastor I ran over had gone 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. So humiliating for my sixteen-year-old self. Then she asked me which boys touched my car. When I pointed the group out, one saw me pointing. Then he noticed my mom and freaked, yelling at everyone that she was there.
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 five-foot-one woman.”
Rules of The Road
“I live directly behind a charter school.
And because it was on the main road, the parents dropped off and picked up their kids on the street I lived 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 I could pick my boys up from school (important for later) only to discover a car parked where it was blocking at least half 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 was unable to stop her as she dashed onto the school grounds.
He’d gotten no further with the remaining occupant than I had.
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.
What was her excuse for blocking my driveway?
‘I had to pick up my boys!’
Apparently, she had a right to keep me from picking up my own boys because she had to pick up hers. No, she did not listen to me and yes I was ticked off. The one thing I can thank the global crisis for was, that I didn’t have that headache anymore.
By the way, yes, it was illegal to block driveways, and trespass to park in someone else’s driveway without their permission. The school had told the parents multiple times not to block our driveways.
I know because my son actually went to that school and they sent flyers home with the students multiple times to remind them not to block our driveways.
That and the school staff had come out to assist me when someone was blocking/using my driveway.”
Size of Relativity
“After my mother passed away, I was clearing out her home and had several large boxes of books that were to be donated to our public library.
I also had my horse trailer loaded with furniture and other items, so I parallel parked along the street and took up three and a half spaces for the five or ten minutes that this would take. There wasn’t much space behind my trailer and I couldn’t pull forward because of the building.
So I knew I would have to back up to leave.
As I was loading the boxes of books onto a cart, an older woman pulled a Smart Car into the space behind the trailer which wouldn’t have allowed me any room to back out. She didn’t parallel park either but straight in with her front tires kissing the curb and proceeded to walk towards the library.
I politely asked how long she was going to be parked.
She gave me a sour look and said, ‘A few hours.’
I briefly explained that I was donating some books and would be leaving in a few minutes. I also pointed out that her car would be blocking me since I had to back up to leave.
She apparently didn’t like that and said, ‘Well you shouldn’t have parked there and I’m not moving my car for you or anybody!’
This was literally the only place I could park since the trailer wouldn’t fit into the parking garage. It was too tall.
I told her in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘That’s okay; my trailer won’t suffer any damage while I’m pushing your car out of the way as I’m backing up.’
She got red in the face and moved her car as I finished loading the books.
I don’t believe she liked my sense of humor.”
Canned
“This happened to everybody in the office, but we all thought it was hilarious.
All of us but the boss, that is.
I was working as an editor for a large city magazine. In its heyday (which was still in progress at the time), this thing cranked tons of money for its owner. Magazines made money by selling ad space, and that — ad space sales — took a special kind of talent.
The top sales guy had that talent, in spades.
As you can imagine, he was kind of a wired, aggressive sort of guy. A powerhouse, one might say.
Well, one day he and the owner got into some kind of a disagreement. And the boss had cut off his own nose to spite his face and canned the guy in the middle of their quarrel.
The magazine provided this sales director with a car — a very nice car.
I believe it was a Cadillac. What we used to call a living room on wheels. Could have been an Olds.
But whatever, it was a big luxury car.
The fired ad director cleaned out his desk and called his wife to come pick him up, which she did.
Before they left, he pulled the car out of its parking spot in our lot — this lot just had room for two parallel back-to-back rows of employee vehicles. He parked the car smack in the middle of the lot, tossed the keys in, locked the doors, and slammed them shut.
And away he and the wife went.
Well, of course, everyone on the magazine was now trapped in the parking lot. None of us could pull our cars out. It took a while for anyone to notice. But eventually, we noticed. The sales staff had to drive around the city to hustle up paying customers, and anybody who wanted to go to lunch had to drive to get there.
The boss, who was, shall we say, less than perfectly beloved by his employees, had to hire a locksmith to open the car’s doors so he could move it out of the way.
He was so mad he about blew a gasket.
The rest of us? We never enjoyed a spectacle so much in our lives.”
Teamwork
“A tiny street fair happened every Thursday evening, and my community band was its main attraction.
As soon as we finished our first performance of the evening, one of the horn players had to rush off to her real job. However, someone had parked behind her and blocked her car.
When she managed to track down the guy, he simply refused to move, stating that one, he didn’t have to, and two, since she’s a girl, her job couldn’t be all that important, anyway. I sarcastically suggested that her boss expected her to have coffee ready for him when he arrived.
It flew right over the guy’s head; he thought I was serious.
The guy wandered away.
We were a band.
We knew how to work in concert.
The percussion section gathered. Nearby, there were two buildings with a very narrow space between them. The drummers lifted the guy’s 1960-ish behemoth and carefully placed it sideways in that space.
There were six inches of clearance fore and aft and two brick walls.
When the guy happened to wander by, he saw that his car was completely stuck.
He found a police officer, who studied the matter, and said he had never seen anything like it. He had no idea how the guy was going to get his car out of there, but he had to find a way or get a parking ticket.
Much later that evening, after we had finished our final performance and the vendors were packing up, our drummers lifted the car and carried it to freedom.
Its owner got to go home a couple of hours later than he had planned.”
Gone Fishing
“This happened to me when I was living in college at University.
There was a car park with about eighty spots in close proximity to my college, and another overflow car park about ten minutes walk away. There was a high demand for the closest car park, with cars often getting double-parked while students dropped off groceries and other things in their dorm rooms.
This was usually fine because cars would be double-parked for about five to ten minutes.
One afternoon, I was walking to my car to head off to work, and I noticed that mine and another car had been parked in by a shiny Ford Focus. I was a bit worried because I had left just enough time to drive to work before my shift started. There was no one about it, so I took a picture of the car and uploaded it onto the college’s social media page, asking the owner to move their car as soon as possible.
It turned out that this dufus had not only parked me in but had also gone on holiday.
He had gone on a ‘boys’ trip with a dozen other college students to Melbourne which was a good 1,000+ km away, and wouldn’t be back for another three days. I could not believe the audacity this bloke had to leave his car jammed between the road and two innocent cars.
I still don’t think he had two brain cells to rub together.
I ended up borrowing my mate’s car to get to work. I was late, but luckily my bosses were very accommodating.
A kind soul raided the moron’s dorm room and found his spare set of keys and thankfully moved the car the next morning.
I wish it had been towed away.”
Karma
“I used to park in a public parking structure next to my office.
It was open parking, but I always arrived around six am, 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 in the spot when I arrived.
Then, I’d just 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 to deal with this.
I immediately went to the parking office with a picture of the parking job.
The manager looked up the plate number and said 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, rung it up, and asked to talk to the person.
The receptionist forwarded me to her and she was quite shocked I was able to track her down.
I asked her to come to move her vehicle immediately and she went off.
Again, repeating the ‘there are no reserved spaces, who the heck did I think I was to always take that spot, and she’d move her car when she was good and ready.’
I’m about to return the language and the manager was giving me the cut signal.
I covered the receiver, though she wouldn’t have heard anything over her screaming. He told me to just hang up. He knew who she was and she was always making trouble. She would always come into the office complaining about this or that. I hung up.
He said he’ll take care of it, but it would take an hour or so.
I told him I had to leave because I’m late for an appointment and I would 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 since 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 parked again 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 explained how he had called the lady back after I left and told her that she was in violation of the terms of parking. He also told her she had to move it immediately.
He apparently got an earful as 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 seventy-seven 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, and 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.”
Friendly Disposition
“I came out of the grocery store and found my car was blocked by a woman sitting in her car.
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 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.
But since 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 this 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.
Again, she refused.
I said, ‘Look, do I need to get the policeman?’
There was a patrol car at the other end of the lot.
She said, ‘Go ahead.’
So 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 so 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.”
Friendly Reminder
“I was pulling our handicapped wheelchair-accessible three-fourth ton van into a parking space in front of the restaurant area.
A small blue open sedan cut us off and parked.
I had to hit the brakes hard or 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, and since I am also handicapped, speed was 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 women 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 had been a long drive and we needed a rest and a break.
More fine words from the young women came and their manners were getting worse. The same could be said for their vocabulary. 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 were waving their arms around and pointed 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 needed to refresh ourselves and grab a bite every couple of hours.”
