Actually, I think it’s more the PRINCIPLE of the thing than the additional physical effort involved. I’m NOT one of those people that will sit and wait 2 minutes for someone to load their car and empty a nice spot while blocking traffic in the entire parking lot. I’d just as soon park far away and be in the store quicker than if I had sat and waited.
It’s just that when I see all these EMPTY parking spaces not being used being reserved for someone else for a silly reason, I get unnerved. If all of those 12 spaces were full, and I saw all these pregnant women coming out of the cars or pushing baby strollers, I’d probably shut the hell up!
This whole thing though, and this is probably a bad example but it’s the feeling I get, reminds me of those annoying “Baby on Board” signs that were a quick fad in the 1980s. In other words, because you have children in your car, I need to slow down, but it’s okay if I drive like a bat out of hell and wipe out a childless couple instead?
Mrs. Tygr is eight months pregnant. Her ankles are swollen twice their normal size. By the end of every single day she is in throbbing pain from the waist down. She needs to spend every evening after work lying down with her feet hoisted onto pillows. But some days she can’t. Some days she has to go shopping. And some days after she comes home from shopping I have to hold her because she is in tears from the pain of trying to stand and walk upright. She and I have actually been praying for stores in our area to start offering expectant-mother spaces, but it hasn’t happened yet. Then I read this:
You miserable worthless pile of steaming dogshit.
Now I have to live with the knowledge that there exist in this country individuals with such a high degree of self absorbtion that the idea of being asked to offer consideration to women who are dealing with one of the most physically challenging times of life is actually offensive to them. It is truly appalling that you have reached the physical stage of adulthood without the commensurate level of mental maturity that would give you the ability to act beyond your own self interest and have a modicum of compassion.
One of these days you will find yourself in need of some measure of consideration from strangers. I fervently wish I could be there just to point and laugh.
You really need to consider closing that festering hole that keeps flapping there between your nose and chin. Everytime you open it, spewing forth ever-more idiotic, mentally deficient ravings, you demonstrate the abysmal enormity of your ignorance.
Though to the very depths of my soul I hope that you and your spouse never successfully reproduce (thereby foisting even more self-absorbed pin-headed mouthbreathers onto an already saturated planet), part of me actually DOES wish that you’d experience some of the misery that a pregnant woman suffers through. Maybe you ought to ask the poor woman that squoze YOUR worthless ass into this world how much misery SHE had to endure for nine months. And make sure you read your OP to her. Just understand in advance that when you see her weeping, it won’t be because of her pride in her upstanding progeny.
Actually, I’m not sure you’ve ever stopped.
I know we’re all here to fight ignorance, even here in the Pit, but I’m beginning to think you might be too far gone. To actually think you’re entitled to a decent parking space; to deliberately take one away from a person who could actually USE the extra help, thereby making her walk the extra 100 yards in said 90 degree heat and 90% humidity; to lie about why you parked there and tell anyone who you’ve displaced to “go fuck themselves”…?!?
Your immaturity, insensitivity, and ignorance are astonishing. There are a great many things I’d like to say to you that are outside the scope of these boards, but for now I’ll rest slighty easier in the knowledge that (at least) one of our moderators knows you for an asshole.
This is a great illustration of how quick SOME people are to attack families with children. People with children and pregnant women have done nothing here except, apparently, to be valuable customers that store-owners are trying to accomodate.
When my wife was expecting, her labor was brought on by one of those “few extra feet” walks. Early. A walk that she’d not have had to take, had there been available parking up close.
Obviously, dear Vinnie has never been pregnant, nor had to deal with infants or toddlers in any large way.
So fucking what if there’s a dozen or two empty spaces close to the building? If you can’t walk the extra 100 feet or whatever, then you deserve to have one of them. If it’s so difficult to take an extra 40 strides, then perhads you should be relagated to one of theose motorized carts, so your poor atrophied legs won’t get fatigued. Otherwise, show a little fucking courtesy towards people who have a bit more on their hands than you do.
VV: *This whole thing though, and this is probably a bad example but it’s the feeling I get, reminds me of those annoying “Baby on Board” signs that were a quick fad in the 1980s. In other words, because you have children in your car, I need to slow down, but it’s okay if I drive like a bat out of hell and wipe out a childless couple instead? *
I think it’s probably a bad example, as I always figured that the real purpose of those “Baby on Board” signs was to alert other drivers that the car is being driven by a frazzled new parent who is not only severely sleep-deprived but is likely being distracted to the point of insanity by incessant screaming from the back seat. I actually kind of appreciate being warned about things like that when out on the roads.
And while I don’t much care for the “childless people aren’t worth any attention or consideration” attitude either, I think you’re being a bit oversensitive on this issue. Resenting having to park a few spaces further away in order to save the closer spots for pregnant or post-pregnant people, to the point of dishonestly stealing such spots for yourself? Resenting a “Baby on Board” sign because you interpret it to mean that nobody minds if you kill non-babies? Aren’t you getting a little carried away here?
Speaking as a fellow childless person, what I’d prescribe for you is a weekend of babysitting a relative’s or friend’s infants or preschoolers. After you hand them back on Sunday evening and collapse on the floor, you will probably feel much more sympathetic to parents and much less inclined to gripe about stores offering them a few perks that you don’t get.
(P.S. Hang in there Tygr, and best of luck to you and the Tygress! And Vinnie, so you won’t feel that the childless people are getting unfairly overlooked again, all best wishes to you and Mrs. Virginslayer too.)
Maybe someday they’ll come up with parking spots for Inconsiderate Ignorant Lazy-Ass Whining Jackasses With Nothing Better To Do With Their Time. It could be a nice pretty blue sign with a big puckering asshole on it, just to make sure you can recognize your own.
Tell ya what, next time you go to the store, carry a 25 pound bag of cement with you from your parking spot in the back row to the front door. Do this a few times. You might have a little sympathy for the people who have to carry a baby in a good car seat–the load can get up to 30 or 40 pounds by the time the little one is ready to get to the store by him or her self.
Good for you that you’ve chosen not to reproduce. It’s probably a good thing, since you’d teach your children to be as self-absorbed as you are.
seriously pregnant ladies should not go to the mall alone?
that seriously pregnant ladies should make their “asshole” drop them off right at the front door of the store/mall and then go park the car in the farthest reaches of the parking lot (if necessary) and do the reverse when heading home?
that seriously pregnant ladies should have conducted a survey of their local shopping parking perks before letting their “asshole” get them pregnant?
I’m sure that these have now become a form of boasting or self-righteousness on the part of many people and like any fashion, once a certain number of people adopt it others will do so without considering what its purpose might be.
However, I believe they were first introduced in Germany following an incident in which a baby died after being left in a wrecked car because rescuers did not know he was there. The purpose was not to imply that other drivers should be especially careful (as if they were going to deliberately ram into you if you didn’t have a baby in the car) or that the driver was likely to be too tired, distracted or whatever to drive properly (as if that would stop you driving into a lamp post).
[1] seriously pregnant ladies should not go to the mall alone? *
Yes. I agree that pregnant women should limit as much as possible any painful and uncomfortable activities (and I’m sure everybody else agrees with me, especially the pregnant women), but you can’t assume that they will always be able to avoid going shopping. As has been pointed out above, sometimes you just can’t persuade your maid to make the trip.
*[2] that seriously pregnant ladies should make their “asshole” drop them off right at the front door of the store/mall and then go park the car in the farthest reaches of the parking lot (if necessary) and do the reverse when heading home? *
Yes. It’s nice if your husband (you call your husband “asshole”? how sweet) or friend or other companion can help you out by going shopping with you and dropping you off and picking you up at the door, but sometimes it’s simply not possible to arrange it.
[3] that seriously pregnant ladies should have conducted a survey of their local shopping parking perks before letting their “asshole” get them pregnant? *
Why, yes. Absolutely, yes. No question about it, yes. Assuming that reproductive choices should be based on local parking perks is definitely what I would call “too much of a stretch.” (Also, how would that help solve Vinnie’s problem? He’s complaining that there are too many unused “stork parking” spaces, not that there are too many pregnant women who need to use them and should have postponed their pregnancies till the parking lot got less crowded.)
You have a right to park close to the store? Wow, what a cool country you must live in. What happens if lots of people assert that right at once?
In the United States, the right of the property owner to assign preferential parking for pregnant women, or to the senior executives of the company, or to delivery trucks, or whatever else, supercedes your privilege to enter on the property.
If that upsets you, you have the right to enter on someone else’s property and shop there, a solution I proposed in my first post in this thread.
Tom H:The purpose [of “BoB” signs] was not to imply that other drivers should be especially careful (as if they were going to deliberately ram into you if you didn’t have a baby in the car) or that the driver was likely to be too tired, distracted or whatever to drive properly (as if that would stop you driving into a lamp post).
Yeah, I knew that that wasn’t actually their real purpose—guess I should have put a smiley on that paragraph. But I didn’t know about the real origin of their use as a guide for accident crews: thanks, you learn something new every day on this board!
When I was nearly three, my parents were blessed with the birth of a son. Dad was lucky to catch the birth, as during the last couple of weeks of Mum’s pregnancy, he’d been sent off to work some distance away, and had to camp out at the location. This was a one-off situation, and he’d never before been sent away to work (and it never happened again).
Which means that, if Mum had to wait for Dad to get home to do the shopping, we would have gone a week without food.
Doesn’t happen often enough to suit you? Think my Dad should have risked his job by refusing to be sent away while his wife was 9 months pregnant? Ok, then how about this one…
My old school chum is grown up and married now. Three years ago, she and her husband purchased a house in our home town. Late last year, she fell pregnant and in May she had a baby girl. Her husband was summoned for the birth, and made it on time, despite the fact that he lives nearly two hours drive away. No, they aren’t seperated. Her husband can’t get work locally, so he took a job in the city, and finds it too far to commute, so he lives in a trailer there all week. Friday night he comes home, early Monday morning he drives back. If she waited for him to get home to take her to the store, she could have days to wait.
You could argue that my friend should have asked someone else to take her to the store, but that argument doesn’t work in my mother’s case. She hadn’t lived in the town long enough to have made friends, and while her mother-in-law lived nearby, she had never held a licence. I don’t think it’s such a stretch to imagine that there are people similarly isolated out there.
It’s simplistic to say that heavily pregnant women shouldn’t shop alone. Sometimes, people don’t have choices in these matters.