Can I toss in my disdain for people that won’t cede part of the aisle/sidewalk/walkway even a smidgen to allow you to pass without jumping the curb?
My favorite so far was the lady with about 5 tweenagers entering the Steak & Shake who allowed me, carrying an infant in a carseat, to hold the door for her and her crew.
World peace begins with merging. <—I want to make a bumper sticker that says that. It’s my own personal belief system.
I think the reason Anne Frank believed that people were truly good at heart was because she never had a chance to drive or work a customer service job. Though then again, if she could say that about nazis she could probably handle an asshole in a hummer or a woman insisting, “This lipstick is on sale! Go check the price if you don’t believe me!”
Put me down with the people who just don’t get purposeful rudeness.
Last Christmas I was cruising the shopping centre carpark, which was of course full of people doing likewise, it being ‘the season’ and all. Now, the aisles in this particular carpark are not the greatest - there is only just enough room for two (average to small sized) cars to pass each other, assuming nobody else has parked their car with it’s rear poking out.
So I go down this one aisle and see about two thirds of the way up there is a car stopped, idling, in the middle of the path (as in, no room for any sized car on either side). I figure it’s waiting for someone to back out of a spot near it and drive up behind the vehicle, leaving a car-sized space between us in case he wants to reverse at all. I’m still in my ‘lane’ of the aisle, though, unlike the car.
Sure enough a car in front of him leaves it’s park, as, much to my pleasure, does the car next to it. I figure I’ll wait for this guy (I can see it’s a guy now) to turn in and then take the spot next to him. By this time a few other cars have come up behind me, all waiting for him to move so I can move so they can move.
He doesn’t move. There’s nothing obstructing him, he’s just sitting there. I can now also see a small boy peeking out from behind the passenger seat, looking at the line of cars. He appears to point us out to his dad (presumably). Dad glances into his rear-view mirror, but does nothing.
It’s been 3-4 minutes. People are now stuck in a line behind us. Nobody can reverse out, except the last person, who is probably too far back to see what is going on.
I honked my horn, once, quickly. No reaction, except that the little boy seems to tap his dad’s shoulder. Dad does nothing.
I got out of the car and went around to his window, which was unwound. I excused myself and asked him nicely if he was going to take the park he was in front of. He told me no and to fuck off. I ignored that and asked him if he could please move either along so that we can park and others can have room to turn around or to move to one side so that we can get past him. His reply: ‘Look, you little bitch, I’m not fucking moving - so fuck off.’
Now, if it was any other carpark, I would have gone to fetch one of the security guys but this one was notorious for having no one on duty. Instead, I told him he was a inconsiderate and petty little man and trudged to the back of the line of cars (now, 20-25 cars long) and asked the lady at the back of it to reverse and pick another direction, explaining the situation. Of course, a lot of of other car passengers see this and assume I’ve gone down to apologise for something I’ve done that has caused the delay and many yell abuse at me as I make my way back to my car and wait for everybody to reverse. The guy was still sitting there when I emerged from the shop a half hour later, with another line of cars behind him.
I still get very, very pissed off just thinking about it.
Grrrrr.
THAT is just very weird. Rude doesn’t even begin…
I think I would have laid on the horn (not that it might have done any better…) And not just a single blast…wait to see if he moved… blast… wait… But hit the horn, for like 5 minutes straight, more or less as needed. Kind of the Noriega noise pollution solution.
The most hilarious thing I ever saw in a parking lot was outside a bagel store by my house.
Dude is parked in the middle of the aisle, waiting for his friend to get a bagel or whatever. Old Lady is behind him, unable to go forward because of Dude, and unable to back up due to the line of cars. OL honks, waits a beat, honks, rinse repeat. Dude gets out of his car, goes over to her window (which is up) and begins screaming obscenities at her. She stares straight ahead and doesn’t look at him.
Note this is in a very crowded parking lot on a sunday afternoon. Lots of witnesses to keep his temper in check.
Dude returns to his car and sits in it. The moment he’s back behind the wheel, she starts honking again. Dude gets out again, returns to screaming obscenities at her window. They repeat this two more times. The guy is livid, I think his head is going to explode. But he seems just smart enough to realize that dragging a little old lady out of her car in front of a crowd would be a bad idea. OL is quiet, serene, and patient as hell. If he sat, she honked. It was hilarious to watch.
(I will say, though, it sucks to be generally stuck somewhere. I once had my car die in the middle of a narrow but busy street. I’ve got a dead car, (flashers on), that I am trying to PUSH out of the road. No one stopped to help, but lots of people called out obscenities at me as they drove around me)
People that do that mystify me also. I was an Army Recruiter in New Jersey a few years ago. Now, other incidents have caused me to believe that New Jersey is the a-hole capitol of the world, but one morning I was driving to work in my own car and an old man in a car heading towards me in the opposite lane flipped me off. For no reason. I was tempted to turn around and chase him down and as a coworker in the car said “kick some old man ass”, but I don’t usually react with violence to things like that.
Still I wonder even today what I could have possibly done to make some stranger feel the need to flip me off.
Walmart has a drive through landscaping supplies area wide enough for two vehicles. Somebody parked in it an went inside to get stuff and purchase landscaping supplies. Your only to go in it to pick up already purchased stuff. We bought some 4 cu.ft. bales of sphagnum, and drove over to pick it up. They are heavy and you want to be as close as possible to the stack. We parked and started to load, with the truck parked right to our side. A vehicle drives up behind us and the driver starts bitching that we needed to move further down to load. The really great thing here is that they decided to drive through. They weren’t getting anything, I was loading heavy sphagnum, and the other vehicle still only had a passenger, since the driver still didn’t pay and come out to load up. We of coarse finished loading before we moved and the other person found out that the short cut was a long wait. Boohoo. They could have backed out anytime they wanted also.
Last year during Yard Sale Season I was absolutely flabberghasted by a woman’s rudeness. My town is an old one-- the streets are sort of narrow, allowing for only one lane of traffic each way on some of them.
I was driving to work and the woman in front of me spotted a yard sale. She stopped, threw on her hazards and her passenger got out. No harm, no foul in that. I thought she was going to let her passenger out, circle around the block and find a place to park or pick her up when she was done looking. But no. She* sat* there, hazards blinking merrily, while her friend looked around.
Now, this is a busy street. I couldn’t pass her into the other lane because of all the traffic. Cars were piling up behind me and horns were blaring. She sat there as placid as Buddha on the Mount while her friend idly browsed between the tables of junk.
A nice guy stopped his car back behind a side street, leaned out and motioned that the people in front of him could reverse and turn down the side street, that he would block traffic until we could all get out. I waited until I could do so, then backed up and turned myself. Last sight of her I had, she was still sitting there, in the middle of the road, completely oblivious to the new line of cars which was stacking up behind her.
This is why I am very sad that bumpers these days are painted over. Still, they do meet 5MPH standards.
I was leaving the Lowe’s parking lot. To leave the lot, all traffic had to stop at one of three stop signs at the beginning of the driveway that fed Lowe’s traffic onto the main road. I pulled up to the sign, signalled to make a left turn onto the driveway while looking to my right. As I stopped, I saw a pickup slowing down as it approached the stop sign on my right. As I started to make my left turn, the truck decided not to stop at all, hit the gas, and sped past me as the driver stuck his head out his open window to shout “fuck you!” at me. I had to hit the brakes to avoid *him * hitting me. After we pull out onto the main road, me right behind him, he gives me the finger out the window as he takes the first exit.
Now what the hell provoked that? He ran the stop sign, not me; he almost ran into me (and would have if I hadn’t slammed on the brakes), and he’s pissed at me? Whatever.
Funny thing is, the exit he took ends in a traffic light about 50’ after it exits the main road. If I didn’t have my 2-year old in the car with me, I would have been inclined to approach his window and ask, “did I do something to piss you off back there, or are you just an asshole?”
People are just freakin weird . This same phenomenon seems to apply indoors.
I stopped at the grocery store to pick up butter the other day, and had been looking at the display for maybe 30 seconds when I hear a loud “EXCUSE ME!” right in my ear.
There’s some girl of about 20 (no shopping cart to make navigating the aisle a problem) who wants me to move so that she can walk exactly where I am standing. There’s planty of room on the other side of the aisle, and she didn’t want anything from the shelf where I was. 
I have noticed people in stores do this type of thing on more than one occassion though. Just gotta push their way through a crowded aisle rather than walk around…just for the hell of it, apparently. I don’t get it.
A couple years ago, at Christmastime, I waited patiently for a primo spot twenty yards from the mall entrance. The woman who had it was nice and courteously speedy–stuff in the car, into the driver’s seat, out of the space. I had my blinker on, and was letting her pull all the way out of the space and go around me, and some fuckstick came around the end of the aisle and took my spot.
I pulled up behind him. “Hey, I was waiting for that spot.”
He ignored me.
“Hey,” I said again. “That was my spot.”
He ignored me some more and started walking toward the mall.
So I drove less than a foot behind him with my hand on the horn until he hopped the curb to walk through the entrance. He was starting to look a little alarmed, when he did, too. I think he may have actually been afraid I’d drive right into the mall after him.
Didn’t do anything to make my day easier, but it sure as hell made me feel better.
Last year I was involved in an extremely minor fender bender.
Yes, it was my fault.
We were stopped at a light and my foot slipped off the brake.
I hit the car in front of me at aproximately 2 miles an hour.
The woman driver indicated that I should pull over so I did.
I got out and apologized profusely.
Her car had zero zip nada damage-as I said, we were both stopped and I slid into it.
She was extremely hostile and when I pointed out politely that there was no damage to her car, she started babbling about how the tail lights might not work.
I asked her to get in and test them.
What do ya know-everything was hunky dory.
“Great”, says I, “everything seems to be working. “So sorry I hit you.”
She whips around and snarls “Just get the fuck away from me, get the fuck away. I’m calling the cops.”
I was floored but I did have the presence of mind to look at the teenager that was riding in her car and say sweetly 'What a great example your setting for your daughter.”
I’m still not over the trauma of six years ago, when a man flipped me off in the drop-off line at our Catholic elementary school. (I think my “sin” was to not let him merge into the line ahead of me when he roared up the left side of the line then sat waiting to be allowed in without having to wait for the line to move, like the rest of us. He was More Important.)
I felt the need to not allow him to get away with this: flipping off another parent, a member of your parish, while your child is in the car! So, when the line stopped, I got out and confronted him with “nice example for your kid,” adding that we were in sight of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for heaven’s sake.
Wrong I was to think heaping some guilt on was the right move. He proceeded to give me the “Crazy Lady Here!” face … twirling fingers on the side of his head, crossed eyes, etc. He then cut his wheels to go around my car ahead of him, with me standing at his door, forcing me to back up and let him whip around my car. I was shocked by his behavior.
On the other hand, there are people on this board who said they would purposely take a long time or even go back to the store to incovenience someone who is waiting for their space. I’m sure that was in the context of someone who followed them around the parking lot but same idea.
You know, I really don’t care if I have to walk an extra 100 feet. I’ll park in the back of the lot rather than wait on someone. Besides, the time spent waiting could be spent walking to the mall’s entrance…I could wind up getting there faster, and get a little blood flowing at the same time.
I also avoid the mall like the plague between mid-November and mid-January.
That’s pretty much why I don’t hurry up if someone if waiting for my spot. I usually park at the end of a row and if someone is waiting for my spot, it’s only because they wanna save walking maybe three whole extra spaces. I don’t intentionally dawdle but if I would usually arrange my belongings, make a phone call, etc. if no one is waiting, I’ll go ahead and do it if someone is sitting on my butt. Geez, why should I hurry so you can save 30 feet of walking?
(note, if it’s a very crowded lot and there a no spaces, I understand and will move quickly)
Yesterday my husband and I were driving home when we witnessed a new level of astonishing rudeness. We were in a line of cars at a stoplight when the light turned green. The first car in line didn’t move, so after a few seconds the car behind him gave a little honk. (it wasn’t immediate, he had plenty of time to react to the light.) Anyway, so the guy in the first car did not like that one bit. He went through the intersection and moved to let the second car pass, then proceeded to throw tennis balls out his window at the guy who had honked at him. Of course the tennis balls are careening all over the road at traffic and not just at that guy’s car. Luckily the guy who honked had the presence of mind to just keep driving away from him and turn off the road into a parking lot. That was such a WTF incident.
My husband wanted to call the cops but his cell phone was dead.
I’m always dismayed, but usually not surprised, at those who think they have some moral justification to use their vehicles to retaliate against some perceived affront. If you do that you are engaging in road rage and, in most jurisdictions in the U.S., you are committing a crime. Patience and tolerance are an essential part of being a good, safe driver. There are always going to be other drivers who make mistakes, have poor judgment, or are just rude. You must keep your cool and avoid these people and/or report them to the police if appropriate, but do not try to “teach them a lesson” by using your vehicle as a weapon, it’s just never the right thing to do and it’s very, very dangerous. Something that might otherwise be forgotten in a matter of minutes, could be turned into a catastrophe and ruin your life.
Okay, forgive me, but that’s just hilarious. I know, I know, it could cause an accident, could damage cars, is illegal littering, etc.–so I know better than to think it’s funny. But I think it’s funny.