News flash: 'did' and 'did not' are NOT the same thing.

The BBQ Pit
1

Yesterday, as I was driving along I stopped at the local convenience market to get a coke (in the interests of full disclosure, a diet coke w/lime). I asked my passenger if they’d mind running in and getting it for me (my car door locks are acting cranky these days).

So I pull into the parking lot, spy a space near the door, realize as I’m pulling in that the extremely faded paint on the asphalt indicate that I’m pulling into a designated handicap parking spot. I immediately back up and pull into a different slot (note, I never even got all the way into the one).

When my passenger returns, she tells me of the conversation w/the clerk.

CLerk: “You almost pulled into the handicap parking space. I saw you.”
Passenger: “yea, but we didn’t park there”
Clerk “but you almost did. you should be more careful. They should only be used by people who need them”.
Passenger walks away.

Now, I’m as rigid as anyone else about people who don’t have the proper signage shouldn’t park in those spots but:

  1. From the clerks vantage point, she had no way at all to see if I had the proper signage or not. (in MI, you can either have a ‘hang from the rearview mirror sign’ or a license plate - which is only on the rear of the car).

  2. Even so - I didn’t fucking park there. Not even for a second. the car was never turned off, as soon as I realized it was a handicap space, I immediately pulled out and parked elsewhere.

  3. If your fucking store would paint the parking space more often than once a century, perhaps even minor ‘near miss’ parking attempts like mine could be avoided.

2

People have this bizarre hyper protective thing about handicapped parking spaces. Just don’t have the person around if you have the guts to use the handicapped stall in a bathroom. They’ll go into a diatribe into how 1/3rd of the stalls should go unused, and everyone should wait in line rather than use that stall.

3

That clerk was clearly a jerk, ban them.

4

Wha??

Those stalls are “handicap accessible” not “handicap reserved”. That’s idiotic.

5

Yes, but this is the same people who decide that the older child is automatically the guilty one - even when the age difference is ten whole days. Actually, ten days and 6 hours (that was the difference with my school best friend).
My cousin’s wedding, two weeks ago, was in a hotel with large and small bathrooms. I know the owners, so I know that the initial plans included only the large bathrooms, but the owners asked to have a few more thrown in because they were too far apart when you have a large party. The large bathrooms come in male/female pairs, each with several stalls including one that’s accesible and has a baby table. The small bathrooms are all unisex, accesible and have baby table. People were actually walking all the way down the hall to the large ones, even after they’d gotten, uh, overused. Some were even ashamed to take another roll of toilet paper to replace the spent ones, because, you see, they’re stored in the large stall, so… “isn’t that for the handicapped stall only?” “I promise it’s not, would you like me to ask a waitress?”

6

That counter jockey is a sad, miserable little busybody.

7

A lot of people, including me, thought they were supposed to remain available for handicapped folks only. But your interpretation makes sense too; everyone stands or sits in line equitably.

8

I assumed they were for anyone but it was polite to let handicapped people skip ahead and use them once they were vacant, since it might take them longer to undo their clothing, might be more difficult to sense that urge until it’s rather dire, etc. I think it was here that I read about someone who’d been harangued by a woman in a wheelchair who was incensed to find that a bathroom with multiple stalls and a long line waiting actually had a non-handicapped woman in the handicapped stall.

Where I work (a medical center) we have a fair number of people with wheelchairs, walkers, or canes, so when I use the bathroom, I will preferentially go to the regular stall. However, I won’t wait around for another stall to open if the handicapped one is the only one available.

9

Well, I’m not sure about equitably waiting in line. I think it’s considered good manners to let the handicapped person skip ahead a few people when the handicapped stall comes open because there’s only one of them usually, compared to however many for non-handicapped folks.

10

If there is a handicap stall and nobody in a chair in sight, I’ll use it if I’m only going to be in there for a minute.

It must be really annoying for some people in chairs when the changing tables are put in the stalls – changing a diaper takes a couple minutes, it’s not like ducking in there for twenty seconds to pee.

11

Perfect right up to the “walking away” part.

Next time assume a blank facial expression, blick twice, then do the “how many fingers am I holding up” thing.

12

That’s pretty ridiculous.

I have a “chastised for offense not committed” story, too.

A few weeks ago I grabbed some grub at Subway while walking home from a friend’s place, because I was ravenous. (A 6" sandwich and a Coke.) I ate it while walking, and by the time I had finished eating, I was walking through a residential area, so there were no rubbish bins.

Several blocks later, nearly home, and carrying my obviously empty cup and a polyurethane Subway bag containing various bits of detritus (branded wax paper, used napkins, and that little envelope that the cookies came in,) I was accosted by a homeowner who was standing in front of his yard. He gave me the dirtiest of looks and, pointing, he said “You’d better not throw that on the ground!”

I was gobsmacked. I just frowned at him and said “I won’t” as I walked past, but my blood boiled as I kept walking, and I kept rerunning it in my head and thinking of things that I obviously should have said.

First of all, I think littering is extremely objectionable behaviour and it’s pretty insulting to me that someone might look at me and think I might be capable of such a thing. “Any you’d better not beat your wife!” might have been an appropriate response.

Beyond that, how fucking stupid is this guy? How does he think littering works? He had plenty of time to observe that my junk food was consumed, and yet, I was still holding on to the waste. I’m probably twenty years younger than this guy, but I’ve still had plenty of opportunity to observe litterers. A litterer drops their trash the moment it’s no longer useful to them – they don’t carry it around looking for exactly the right bit of ground to clutter up.

I so earnestly wish that I had the presence of mind to stop, look the guy in the eye, and ask him if he thought it was more likely that I was carrying my trash around because it hadn’t occured to me that (if I so desired) I could just stop actively holding on to it and let it fall on the ground, or if maybe it was still in my hand precisely because I’M NOT A DIRTY FUCKING LITTERER, YOU INCREDIBLY RUDE SON-OF- A-BITCH! YOU GO TO HELL! YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE!

Okay, maybe it’s better that I was too stunned to react.

13

to be fair, CHris (the passenger) gave her a pretty impressive “you are too stupid to live, aren’t you?” look.

14

Report him to his manager. Write a nice but firm note explaining what happened and send it to the manager explaining that you will not return to his store.

15

I’ve had a similar thing happen while walking my dog. Twice, a neighbor has either come out of their house or opened their door and yelled “you better clean up after your dog!” On neither of these occasions was Rupert the Wonder Beagle squatting or doing anything that would indicate he was doing anything more than sniffing around like the carefree beagle he is. And, while there are obviously a few dog walkers in the neighborhood who don’t clean up, even a cursory examination of the droppings in question would reveal that such a quantity of poo could not have come from Rupert unless he’d been holding it in for the better part of a week.

One of the neighbors in question has a front lawn festooned with a disturbing mix of saint statues, plaster geese, and little Dutch children-of-the-damned (i.e., painted white except for their eyes, which are ringed in black). I’m not sure what that means, but it can’t be a good thing.

16

I was walking my dog when he decided it was time to poop in the front yard of an owner who happened to be standing there. He started screaming at me about how he’s tired of this shit and demanding I pick it up. I asked him if he thought I was walking around with a fucking plastic bag in my pocket or something. This set him off screaming even worse. It was very satisfying to pull the plastic bag out of my pocket, pick up the poop, smile and walk off.

17

When I read the OP, I did not understand it. Now I’ve re-read it and I still do understand it, so could someone please explain it to me?

18

Well played!

19

Sure Marley. Wring was stopping at a convenience store, and started to pull in to park at a handicapped spot. Noticing the spot was reserved for the handicapped, wring pulled back out and parked elsewhere while the passenger went inside to purchase a tasty diet beverage.

A dimwitted clerk then gave the passenger shit because wring almost parked in a handicapped spot.

20

I’m sorry, Cheesesteak, I was attempting to pretend that “did” and "did not " meant the same thing.