So the Mrs. and I are on our big vacation driving across the Southwest this summer. As we pull into a truck stop, fate smiled on me and a parking space opened up at exactly the right moment. There were four non handicapped car spaces in front of the store, all of them occupied, and about 10 on each side, mostly empty. Parking spaces were not hard to come by. Intending to go around to the many spaces available on the left side, as I approach the store, a car backs out of the left-most parking space in the front. “Perfect timing” I tell my wife as I zip into the space and hop out. Mrs. Six does the same, we meet at the front of the car to go in, and I lock the door.
It’s then that we hear the voice: “Hey, asshole, I was just backing into that space!” Startled, I look to see who is addressing me. A man sitting in a blue mini van is idling in front of the store, perpendicular to the parking spaces, the back of his van several feet past the space I had just parked in. He continues, “Get the fuck back into your fucking rice-burning piece of shit with your fucking trophy and get the fuck out of my fucking space.” The man is screaming, red with anger and jabbing his finger at me. Being a fellow who doesn’t respond well to threats, and who knows better than to escalate an already touchy situation, I do as the experts advise in potential road rage situations and ignore the upset gentleman in the van. Mrs. Six and I proceed into the store, where we take care of our business.
About 10-15 minutes later, as we exit, the man is still there, still idleing in front of the store, waiting for us. He screams some more: “Hey asswipe, what the fuck is your problem?” Although this was in the form of a direct question, the gentleman in the blue van apparently intended it to be rhetorical, as he answered it himself, “You fucking California drivers think you own the fucking road.” At this point he backs his van up to block in my car. I turn around to go back in, which infuriates the gentleman in the blue van, who screams again, his face flushed red with fury, “That’s right you fucking punk, walk away,” at which point he guns his engine and roars out of the parking lot, tires squealing as he goes around the corner, nearly causing an accident as he pulls into traffic without checking first. Problem solved, nobody hurt, I think, but I do feel a little sorry for the the raging driver’s wife.
A couple of hours later, we pull into a rest stop, get out our cooler and set up at a vacant picnic table. We’re eating and talking, enjoying the view, when a young woman approaches us from the other side of the rest area. Neither of us know her. She identifies herself as the wife of the man at the truck stop and apologizes for his behavior. She explains that he insists on backing into parking spaces, and during their trip several people had pulled in behind him after he pulled past a space so he could back in. In our particular situation, the car that vacated the space as we pulled in had done just this, and he had sat there the whole time waiting for the owner to come out and leave so he could have his space. When he did, that’s when I pulled into the space he had been waiting for. After explaining, she apologized once more and finished up by saying that he usually isn’t like this, though the way she said it made it seem as if it’s something she’s done more than a few times before.
We fortunately had no more contact with this gentleman during our trip, other than his flipping us off as we left the rest area (driving past his van, which was backed in).
Gentleman in the blue van: Calm down. I may very well have inadvertantly taken a spot that was rightfully yours. I admit that I may have been in the wrong there, and may have actually been willing to move had you addressed me politely. However, the approach you chose is unlikely to get your desired result from just about anyone. If, as your wife told us, this happens quite frequently, perhaps you could alter your behavior is such a way as to mitigate the problem. First, you might want to consider choosing to take a parking spot that is a bit less convenient so that you are less likely to lose it while backing in. Alternatively, you might want to consider pulling into the prime spots forward to prevent the situation that occurred with us, and apparently had happened many times to you recently. Also, you might want to consider that backing into parking spots is unusual enough that many drivers aren’t looking for vehicles that have driven past a spot to stop and reverse into it. It could be that some of the drivers taking “your” spot weren’t intentionally sniping, but just didn’t notice you or assumed incorrectly that your passing the space meant that you didn’t want it.
Cool off. It’s just a parking spot. It isn’t worth the trouble that getting into a violent confrontation would cause you. If you care nothing about the people you are confronting, you’re doing yourself and your family a huge disservice by putting yourself at risk this way.
It’s just a parking spot.