The point , the way i see it, is that it should be used ONLY if all the other stalls are in use. It irks me when i take my son (who is in a wheelchair) to the men’s room, and I have to wait, even though there are multiple open stalls. Usually it’s a kid who just wanted more room to spread out, i suppose. Man, it gets me!
If there is someone who consistently abuses the handicapped space at work, i would take to calling the police. Man, it irks me!
Actually there have been parking lots for thousands of years, although they indeed were unsafe for children.
There’s likely no point in me posting this because I suspect that neither you nor CatWhisper give a shit; however, I was recently pregnant. I was put on modified bed rest for the last month of my pregnancy. Modified bed rest SUX big hairy balls. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t do housework. I had to lay on my side for 12 waking hours a day, on top of the 8 hours I was expected to sleep at night.
More than once my husband and I went to the mall, parked in the expectant mother slot in front of Toys R’ Us and I waddled to the bench while he got me a power scooter to drive around the mall on to prevent me from losing my mind, stabbing him, and/or flinging myself off the balcony. When the expectant mother slot wasn’t available, that really wasn’t an option as you can’t take the rental scooters out of the mall and there wouldn’t typically be another close spot.
Now, if the expectant mother slot was occupied by another expectant mother - well, fair enough. I know how sucky it is to be trapped in your house for weeks on end.
On the other hand, if it was occupied by someone with twisted self-entitlement issues who resents the fact that the world makes some allowances for people who have chosen to reproduce - well screw you and the horse you rode in on. It’s obnoxious, and douchey, and frankly, I don’t think there’s any able bodied person here who couldn’t use the extra two minutes of exercise required to walk from the back of the parking lot.
And yes, for the record, now that Junior has arrived I park in the farthest stall with him and his stroller specifically to get a bit of extra exercise.
BTW - AClockWorkMelon - bad form buddy, bad, bad form. Even your lame justifications are just making you like like a huge twat. Seriously, leave the tag, park in a regular spot and reduce your douche factor by 10.
How do people know that someone isn’t disabled, just because they appear to be walking fine?
The rule is that you’re only supposed to park in handicapped spots if you have plates or a tag. But what if the tag falls off, or gets left in another car? (Yeah I know, they should still have their tags, but if you change cars unexpectedly it could happen.)
People with disabilities are the biggest minority group out there, and of course, you can enter (and sometimes leave) at any time. Some disabilities are really obvious and others not so much.
While I understand the vitriol some have for inappropriate parkers, let’s leave the Bronson fantasies and car keying to our imaginations, and let the authorities deal with it? I actually think the vigilante behavior is more offensive than the douchebaggery of taking a spot illegally.
And that’s what happens when you let your kids drink out of puddles on the asphalt.
It’s hard to go knock and say, “Excuse me, are you going to be done soon? We can’t fit this weelchair in the other stalls”?
With those kind of restrictions, your walking wasn’t also restricted such that you could get temporary disabled tags?
Why couldn’t your husband have dropped you off at the front door–an even shorter walk than from the nearest parking spot, from which you could waddle in and wait on the same bench?
I’ve actually covered that last bit before -
In some neighborhoods, leaving someone disabled on the walk in front of the store is more or less hanging a large, flashing, neon “MUG ME!” sign over their head. That is not the case everywhere, of course, but it’s yet another consideration. When someone can’t run they’re a “soft target” for predators.
That’s why my husband used to carry a knife. There’s been more than one would-be mugger in Chicago who found out the hard way that while his feet don’t work well there’s nothing wrong with his arm or his ability to pull a blade across an attacker’s face.
Other reasons for not leaving someone out on the walk in front of a store include unstable or slick footing - it might be safer for the person to hobble along holding onto a companion than to attempt to walk on a slick surface and risk a bad fall.
It’s not unknown for stores to harass a driver for stopping even just to drop someone off if directly in front of the store is a no parking zone.
In really bad, snowy, icy, slick weather my preference IS to drop hubby off just in front of the store entrance, but that’s not always possible.
Read it again, Broomy. “I waddled to the bench while he got me a power scooter to drive around the mall on.” She’s not standing in front of the fucking store–she’s sitting on a bench, presumably *inside *since she already made the point that they can’t take the carts out of the store, and from her phrasing, it seems pretty clear that she’s getting there on her own.
ETA: And while personal experience isn’t a cite, I have never once had a store harass me or anyone else I know, or seen anyone get harassed, for stopping at the door to unload a passenger. That’s, you know, kind of the *point *of having an entrance.
Honestly, it would never occur to me to do that because there are actual disabled people that need the spot much more than I did. Modified bed rest sucks, as I mentioned; however, it is temporary and there’s a pretty clear end date in site as opposed to many disabilities which may resolve sometime specific, may resolve some vague time in the future or may not resolve. My need was not as great.
Well, I suppose he could. And I could wait for half an hour on the bench while he finds a spot, parks the car, heads down to the rental place, gets the scooter and comes back and gets me. None of those things will kill me, but having a spot in front of the store makes life just a little bit easier and my outing just a little bit more enjoyable. Toys R’ Us has decided that they have a sufficient number of pregnant woman shopping there (shocking, I’m sure) that designating one spot for preggos works for them.
Obviously, there is no law forbidding non-preggos from parking there, but when I read CatWhisperer state that she goes out of her way to park in those spots just to stick it to pregnant woman, 'cus how dare society offer them something without offering her the same, well, I think she’s being a big fat twat about the whole thing. Almost like she’s going out of her way to make the world a shittier place for others.
I quoted what I originally posted in this thread, in response to A Clockwork Melon saying that he parks in handicapped spaces. I was suggesting to him a way to get his bad-ass on; I wasn’t saying that I do that.
Huh. Well never mind then, and sorry for suggesting that you do.
However, if AClockWorkMelon now decides to park there just to screw over preggos - well, I’m going to knit him an ‘I’m The King of the Entitled Douche-Bags’ sweater for his next birthday.
Please read again. Nowhere do I say it’s necessary. You are reading into it what you want to, not what I wrote. I simply point out why there are obvious valid reasons for having family spaces and why they’re not just a way of making pampered mothers feel special, as Cat Whisperer insanely asserts. And that “temporary” does not equate to “non-handicapped”, as she also states.
If you seriously don’t think that parking lot safety is ever an issue for parents, then you are ignoring something that apparently doesn’t exist in your world. Parents only have two hands. A person can hold only two hands or one stroller/shopping cart at a time. If you have the kids hold each others’ hands, you can’t ensure they won’t let go, or that if you have to yank them out of harm’s way, they’ll all make it. Again, you’ve never had a car or SUV back out of a space with no warning?
Hey, so everybody remembers we’re in **MPSIMS **and not the Pit, right? Because I’m holding my tongue but some other people aren’t, and if I can’t sling around the insults I’d like to, then, dammit, no one else should be able to, either. 
If you couldn’t walk from the other side of the parking lot, guess what? You *were *an actual disabled person.
So I guess you think someone with a broken leg shouldn’t be able to get a temporary disabled tag because there’s a pretty clear end date to their disability?
If it takes you more than five minutes to park a car and walk to the door, you’re doing it wrong.
Gee, I’m so terribly sorry that I misinterpreted you so terribly as to say that you said something was *necessary *when instead *you *said it was needed. *Clearly *those are two words with *completely *distinct meanings.
Showing up late to the party, just to say. I am legally disabled and have the tags in both of my family’s cars. Unless I’m having a “bad day” (i.e. I am particularly weak or in pain that day), I still don’t use a handicapped parking space because there are others that may need them more than me. My mother-in-law, for example, uses a wheelchair, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to take her someplace and find no or “stolen” (by non-handicapped) parking spaces.
There is a special place in hell for people who use handicapped spaces illegally.
I guess you sort of zoned out over the ‘may resolve sometime specific’ part of my post that you quoted? If another pregnant woman, or person with a broken leg, or person with a really badly infected toe chooses to get a disabled parking pass that’s up to them. It never even crossed my mind to do so - there’s a pretty clear end date in site when you’re pregnant. And frankly, if you’re on modified bed rest it would probably be difficult to get a Dr. to sign off on the application for a disabled parking pass because they would say you should be at home lying down and not at the mall riding a scooter.
Where we were shopping is a mega mall. It’s on acres and acres of land. My estimate of 30 minutes to park the car, walk to the mall, get to the customer service kiosk, rent the scooter and get back to where I was at isn’t even a small stretch. Walking from the car to the door may only take 5 minutes, but finding a parking spot could easily take 10. To give an example, on the opening weekend one woman ran over another woman with her car because the 2nd woman was ‘holding’ a parking stall for her friend that was 2 or 3 lanes over. It’s kinda ugly.
And I’m saying that’s *your *problem for not thinking of it. The route was there for you to get parking that would be more useful; you didn’t take it.
If you’re circling the lot looking for the perfect spot, yeah. But if you just take an empty one that’s another 20 whopping feet away from the door, you’ll be walking through the door by the time the person trying to save themselves an extra 30 seconds of walking is still circling like a vulture.
The only relevant complaint is the length of time it would take your husband to park and walk in, since that’s the only thing that would be different. All the other waiting is meaningless, because that would happen even if you parked by the door and walked in together. And if your goal is simply to get to the door as fast as possible, parking at the first spot you come across and walking in should take you no more than five extra minutes–ten if it’s an unnaturally huge lot and you walk really, really slowly.
No - as I said it probably wasn’t. I would be shocked if a pregnant woman on modified bed rest could find a Dr. to sign off on the parking pass - your technically not even supposed to leave the house. I have no idea what women on full bed rest do as they’re not even supposed to sit up in bed.
Regardless of me or my circumstances, I still think that a non-pregnant person who sees an ‘Expectant Mother’ parking slot and elects to take it with other spots available just to stick it to pregnant women is a total douche-nozzle. Really, because a certain store chooses to mark a spot that way is not an affront to the childless among us - they’re just trying to be nice and recognize that there are lots of things that go along with being pregnant that suck without being elevated to the point of disability.
What if I don’t take the spot out of spite but because I just don’t care? I have fucked up joints from a decade of Irish dance, which is about the worst thing on the planet you can do to your lower body, combined with things like my knees being built wrong; there are probably plenty of pregnant women out there who can walk across a parking lot more easily than I can. (Which is to say: it’s easy for both of us, but slightly easier for them.)
And note, I don’t drive at all, so this really is a hypothetical for me.
Remind me never to discuss anything with you in which you have a personal interest. If you’re this unpleasant with hypotheticals…
I’m wondering what you are doing in this thread at all.
I passenge. Since when does being the one driving matter as to whether I have an opinion on where people should park? I’m not telling you the best way to pull into the slot.