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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Leaving a parking space because someone else wants it

185 replies

Allisnotlost1 · 25/09/2025 08:59

I left the gym this morning about 8.15 and, as I did, saw someone arrive and drive the wrong way around the car park. It’s not huge but there’s an overflow which adds about 15-20 steps onto the walk back to the building. There’s also a second overflow which would add about 60 seconds.

I sat in my car to send a difficult emails - to do with bereavement - and I did this there so I could leave it behind and come home and focus on the day. It would have taken about 5 or 6 minutes.

So I start dealing with it and the wrong way driver an older lady, just for visualisation purposes, knocks on my window and asks me if I’m leaving. Yes, I say, it not for about 5 minutes. She asks me to ‘just pull out and wait somewhere’. I say I can’t, because you’ve driven the wrong way around the car park and now you’re blocking the exit. She insists she isn’t and she ‘needs’ the space because the car park is full. She hasn’t been to the overflow.

I look at her gobsmacked, but then ask where is it she expects me to go, and she then gets flustered and says don’t worry about. Ok I say, closing my door. When I left, there were a couple of empty spaces but by then she’d parked on the grass verge on the exit road.

AIBU?

YANBU - she should have used the overflow/s or driven around a bit like anyone else.

YABU - immediately leaving the car park at busy times is just the right thing to do.

OP posts:
Imlyingandthatsthetruth · 25/09/2025 09:14

HelplessSoul · 25/09/2025 09:02

I'd have told her to fuck off and drive properly.

And waited even longer just to piss her off!

You're nice, aren't you?

TheSwarm · 25/09/2025 09:13

Sitting in your car taking up a space in a full carpark when you are finished using the facilities is a bit of a dick move.

didntlikeanyofthesuggestions · 25/09/2025 09:13

It's absolutely fine to sit in a car and send a few emails. If you'd sat in the reception of the gym and done it nobody would have noticed or cared and it would have had the same impact on the other driver.

columnatedruinsdomino · 25/09/2025 09:12

Yabu for remembering something so insignificant and then posting about it.

KimberleyClark · 25/09/2025 09:11

It is annoying when a car park is full to see someone returning to their car only to then just sit there on their phone. Car park spaces are for you to use for as long as you use the facilities. And this woman was not to know you were doing something important to you.

CatsorDogsrule · 25/09/2025 09:09

I wouldn't have stayed in the space in a busy car park, I'd have moved on. It's similar to people that faff around for ages on a petrol station forecourt when there is a queue of people waiting for the pumps.

AutumnCosy2025 · 25/09/2025 09:08

Both as bad as each other.

The carpark was busy, it's for parking & using the gym, not doing admin.

she was being unreasonable not going to tge over flows, but that doesn't excuse you from using a premium car park space to do 'stuff' you could do elsewhere.,

tripleginandtonic · 25/09/2025 09:05

Yabu, its a carpark not an office a d space was limited

basherlass · 25/09/2025 09:03

Could you not have just left and pulled over somewhere else to send the email? The car park is for the gym, not for sitting in your car and sending emails. Fine if it's not busy but when there are only a few parking spaces it's a bit shit. The content of the email doesn't really change anything.

HelplessSoul · 25/09/2025 09:02

I'd have told her to fuck off and drive properly.

And waited even longer just to piss her off!