Naive question from someone who has never seen snow:
Where do you sweep the snow if you can’t put it to the left of you, to the right of you, or in the street?
None. But when that snow packs down and partially melts and refreezes, you wind up with a solid sheet of ice. Sliding on said ice and hitting a wall, post, or other car can cause a decent bit of damage to your car, not to mention the damage slipping on the ice can do to you. I wound up in the ER the weekend before Christmas due to this very thing; I went to get something out of my car in a driveway that had thawed and refrozen a few times, my feet went out from under me on the ice, and I bounced the back of my head off the pavement hard enough to give myself a concussion and whiplash. The resident who did my initial assessment said I was the fourth person he’d seen with the same story in the past few days.
Granted, it’s not normally an issue in this part of the country; snowfall is usually gone in a couple days, so any ice crust you get from the thaw/refreeze cycle is typically just a crust that you break through as you walk along. But when you get weather like we’ve had this winter, or you live someplace like Yankeeton or Canuckistan, you really do need to clean off as much of the snow as you can for safety reasons. Or as my friend told her husband after I fell, this is why I told you to salt the damn driveway.
In that case, you don’t sweep the snow.
You carry it a short distance to a spot of ground – typically the grassy strip beside the sidewalk, unless the snow is deep enough that the resulting pile would slide down into the cleared sidewalk. But lazy people don’t want to carry it, and they sometimes dump it into the already-plowed road or into the cleared parking spot beside them or they pile it up behind the neighbor’s car, blocking it in.
This was a problem last year, when we had the all-time record snowfall for the area. We do have assigned spaces (along with visitor spaces). Among other incidents, some neighbor boys showed entrepreneurial initiative shoveling out and cleaning off cars for residents…by dumping the snow into the spaces already cleared by other residents. We had a chat with their parents and they came back out and did it right.
But another neighbor cleared out the entire rectangle of his spot by shoveling it into the currently-unoccupied spot next to his. We’re not talking about the square area of one car, but a whole marked space plus the path to reach the channel cut through the middle of the parking lot. Since we’d had THIRTY-EIGHT inches of snow in three days, this meant that the unoccupied spot now had its original 3 feet of snow PLUS three more feet on top of it. It turned out that the spot had been unoccupied at the time because someone was moving in that morning.
The old man who owned the place had come by and was struggling with the six-foot cube of snow sealing his space, trying to clear it for the tenants who were coming. I went out and helped him. He was very grateful and remembered the act again later this year when he met my wife, but the point of this story isn’t “look how much snow I shoveled” but “why would anyone think it’s okay to dump all that into someone else’s spot?”
I have long ago given up worrying about the fact that my upstairs neighbors, who are the only people I share the driveway/parking with, will never shovel. Yes, it means that my roommates and I have shoveled three times in the last 24 hours, and those guys get to reap the benefits. But, I need to get in and out of the driveway, so what’reyagonnado?
However, there has been a time or two when they’ve shoveled enough to get their car rolling, and then just plowed over/through the snow in the rest of the driveway, thus ensuring icy, treacherous buildup of snow, and making shoveling more difficult for the rest of the winter. Gah!
On my last assignment in Oberammergau, Germany, I lived in an apartment with no assigned parking. And boy does it snow in Oberammergau.
The first time it snowed during my time, though, it wasn’t even a dusting. But when I got back from work I noticed that many of the residents in my building had placed signs with their tag numbers in front of all of the spots. I thought nothing of it, parked and went inside. A half hour later an irate German fellow came banging on my door claiming I stole his spot. Now, this snow melted as soon as it hit the ground, but I found that it its an unwritten rule there to stake out a space and shovel it during the winter. Not a law, theres nothing that legally stops me from parking where I wish. Still, in the spirit of international relations I went outside, released the brake on my jeep and rolled backward across the street to an empty spot, then pointed out to this guy that an adult would have moved 20 fuckin’ feet, as I just did instead of going nuts over a space he didn’t even have to shovel at that point.
When it did snow…and how…(several feet, all of the time, til spring) the wife and I went out and shovelled the spots of several elderly german residents. I staked out the spot across the street, but several times I found someone parked in it anyway. I just shrugged and parked elsewhere, because you know, I couldn’t stop anyone from parking in the spot I cleared. You can’t claim ownership of a spot, and I refused to park in a spot someone else cleared out of courtesy. But hey, the old german guy whose spot we would clear for him, would buy me drinks at the bar for it.
The only thing to do is take note of the jerks who do this, and bury their cars with your snow during the next snowstorm.
I agree with the OP. It’s not the end of the world, but people who do stuff like that are up there with those who will let the door close behind them and slam into your face, people who don’t wait for you to get off the elevator before going on, people who stop at the end of an escalator and so on. There are plenty of things that aren’t “wrong” that are still douchey.
I have to chime in that this seems to me to be a thing that varies by region, and isn’t obvious just because you live in a snowy region.
Here, we get plenty of snow, but I’ve never heard of “saving” spots in this regard. If it’s street parking, it gets plowed; if it’s off-street, private parking, the owner plows it. Whenever I lived in apartments, the expectation was basically that you drove away and the apartment management company would come by a few times a day to clear out the spots. In fact, my friend’s apartment complex even has signs up encouraging people to move their cars to cleared spots so that they can clear the other spots. Why on earth this would fall on individual tenants is a bit baffling to me, and I would have expected that if I came back and a spot was cleared that it was indeed done by the property owner…
I need to add to that list. Half the people in the building I work at think it is too bothersome to open two sets of doors in a row to get in the building, so they just hit the handicap button that automatically opens both sets of doors. That may be fine and dandy most of the year, but there is a reason for having two sets of doors. In the winter hitting that button means a full minute of direct airflow into the building. When it is in the single digits (and lower) and includes ice and/or snow you get that ice and/or snow inside the building and the security guards who sit just inside get in a really bad mood.
“I think I’ll pick *your *bag to search. Oops, hope that laptop wasn’t expensive”
I don’t totally get this “space someone else dug out” thing. They dug it out so they could move their car OUT, i.e., so they could LEAVE and go SOMEWHERE ELSE. At that point, who in their right mind is going to shovel out a Different spot, rather than just parking there? I know some neighborhoods have this kind of “unwritten” courtesy, where spots kind of belong to people and they know to let those people park there. But that doesn’t sound like the case in this apartment complex.
What if the person is 80-years old? Do you really think they should not be allowed to park in a clear spot?
It’s just douchey. I mean, I would never say anything, but it is one of the reasons I moved into a rented house with its own parking. I don’t expect to have my own spot, but it does irritate when I have shoveled out my spot and Mr. SUV, who has just plowed over his snow, decides to park in my spot. My Corolla can’t ride over all the snow his SUV did, so then I have to shovel it out myself AGAIN. And shoveling is exhausting work.
But I automatically class those people as douchebags. See if they ever get a cup of sugar from me!
I think the idea is that the vast majority of folks who park there were parked during the storm. Thus, they had to “clear” a spot in order to get out in the first place.
Many folks choose to “clear” their spot by spending 10 minutes shoveling behind their car, crawling in through the window, and backing out, leaving a car shaped hole with giant mounds of snow on both sides. Giant mounds of snow that someone is going to have to shovel away, if the shared parking lot is going to remain usable throughout the winter.
It’s a free rider problem. If you want the parking lot to be safe and usable, you have to shovel each parking spot clean, and put the snow outside of the parking lot. However, there are people who will be happy to take advantage of clean clear parking spots, without sharing the work necessary to keep the parking lot that way.
It’s hilarious to listen to people try to defend this.
So if you go to a double feature, at the mall, and 8" of snow falls, while you’re inside, when you come out and dig out your car, does that become ‘your’ spot? Can you come back tomorrow/ in two hours and call out, the owner of the car now parked in that spot, as a douche? Or does that not apply, because it’s a public lot with no assigned spots.
I think this is an American thing. I’ve never heard of it in Canada, to be honest. Which is funny because American’s are so opposed to any kind of ‘entitlements’, a tad ironic when you think about it.
This isn’t an American thing, and your analogy is a bit weak. The OP is talking about an apartment building parking lot, which can be expected to contain primarily, or only, cars belonging to the residents of that apartment building. Sure the OP isn’t “entitled” to that parking spot he cleared. But he’s rightfully entitled to be a bit pissed at his inconsiderate, lazy neighbours.
What they’re doing, by parking in spots already cleared, is avoiding doing any work to clear the parking lot that they get the use and benefit of, while making their neighbours shovel 2 or 3 or 4 parking spots so they have somewhere to park. If everybody just shovelled one spot, everything would be hunky dory. And that’s douchey. Not illegal, not outside their technical rights, but douchey nonetheless. I don’t know why you’re so resistant to that idea.
Germans also have a reputation of putting out towels very early in the morning to claim deck chairs around the pool at vacation resorts and then go back to sleep again.
In the future I will try to resist the urge to mouth “sucka!” as I pull into the spot you’ve cleared. If it was just the two of us (as it is in my neighborhood) I wouldn’t use the cleared spot, because I know who cleared it. In a large parking area I would take whatever spot I thought was best at the time, that’s how it works. If clearing a space conferred ownership I’d be out there clearing and charging at the first sign of snow.
You sure about that? Where do guests park? Share the same spaces, do they? Then if guest pulls into an unassigned lot do they get to park there, or are they out of luck because they didn’t clear any snow?
Really? Can you show me examples from Canada? I’ve lived in the snow belt all my life and never heard of any such issue arising.
Really, how so? It’s a spot in an unassigned lot, which you cleared snow off of, how is that weak, exactly?
The OP said in his original post that it was lot for residents without assigned parking. I assumed that meant it was a lot for residents without assigned parking. Which clearly makes it different from a mall parking lot, where any Tom, Dick or Harry is free to come and park.
His subsequent posts indicate that he’s pissed because his neighbours, i.e., people who live there, are parking in the spots he cleared. I agree if a guest comes and parks in your spot, you’re shit out of luck, but I maintain that if you live there, you’re a bit douchey if you park in a spot someone else has cleared.
And what do you mean “show you examples”? You want addresses? All I can say is I have lived in Canada my entire life (including Winnipeg, Calgary, and various small towns in between where snow is not unheard of), and what the OP is talking about is not something I’m unfamiliar with.
You ignored my analogy(ies) near the bottom of page 1. And I think it’s safe to assume guests are a wild card in this situation.
I don’t know how it is in the specific lots they are discussing…but traditionally guests are not supposed to take resident parking lots. The places I’ve lived have either had a few spots labeled specifically for guests, or guests were supposed to park on the side of the street.
And, yeah, I’m in agreement with those who say that it’s a douchy thing to do.
If you don’t shovel the resident parking spot your car is in, punch it through the snow to get out, and then on your return take a resident parking spot that’s all shoveled? Yeah, you’re lazy and you’re a douche.