"saving" a parking space while the driver moves the car

[Hopandaskip]

(NB: 1)there is more information, but I don't want to add it yet because I believe there are two different issues at stake and want your answer on the first bit before the extra info complicates it (If this is annoying to you, please feel free to go read another thread)
2) I will only be around for a shortish while. I am on a different time zone and I'm going to be AFK for much of tomorrow (your today most probably). If I do not respond immediately, or even within 36 hours then that is why)

I was in a car park today that has a high turnover. It wasn't particularly busy and within 5 minutes two or three spaces had opened up in the same area. I wanted a particular spot and when it opened up I sent my 11yo over to stand in the spot with our stuff while I moved my car (about 50 ft, not 5 minutes away). While I moved my car someone else decided they wanted that spot too and told my son he had to move. He replied that his mum was bringing the car over and she repeated that he had to move and started moving the car forward towards him (!) so he would get out of the way. I jumped out and tried to explain but the situation quickly deteriorated to shouting (oops, not my finest hour)

Sooo what I'm asking is...

1. can you 'save' spaces for someone by standing in them for a minute?
2. Who should have the spot? Is it the one who saw it first and claimed it, or the one who brings their car around?
3. does it matter how busy somewhere is? (it shouldn't in this particular case, but in future)

YWBU

1. NO
2. first car
3. No

Other driver also sounds like a tosser!

YABU

DH and I had this exact fight with someone on a very busy carpark at christmas. Had been driving around for about 40 minutes looking for a space, we found one but with a woman stood in it on her mobile phone. We asked if we could have the space and she said "No, my son is coming for it now" She was on her 'phone directing him to the spot! Isaid "Errr, it doesn't work like that. It's first come first served" Then cunto in a white van pulls up, calls DH a prick and gets the space. I wish I'd gone back and let his tyres down.

So what about the people that "save" loungers at resorts by putting towels on them and not actually using them until several hours later?

Lol LRD no it's not about self service being highly dangerous! It's the principle of the first person actually there to use the facility taking priority (whether that be driver looking for a parking space or someone who has purchased a meal looking for a table). The whole issue of 'saving ' a space would bring its own problems anyway, as people would have hugely differing ideas of how long is acceptable.

Yeah, fair point, I just think one is a matter of what you think is polite, whereas the other really matters as it's dangerous.

I would always get a table first in a restaurant, surly everyone does this? How else would you know if it was worthwhile ordering or not!

Car parks are totally different though.

1. No, and I do wonder if you were there first why you weren't closer to the space to have gotten there first anyway, 50' seems like quite a distance for a car park.
2. I think it's fair for the person who was there first to get it, but the world isn't fair, it'll go to whoever gets to the space first. I've seen some one speed over part of a pavement to beat some one else who was already reversing into a space. People do get crazy for car parking spaces, it doesn't surprise me some one was fine with intimidating a 11yo by driving at him, you put your son in quite a precarious position and in the future I hope will know better.
3. Generally I would expect driver craziness and anger to be directly correlated with the busyness of the car park, but you always get some people who are crazy and angry regardless. I'd imagine the parking space really wasn't worth all the aggro.

If a driver spots a car coming out of a space and waits next to it, clearly indicating their intention, but another driver sneaks into it first, then that is not fair. Just because the second car got their "first" does not mean that they are in the right.

I asked teenagers to move from a table in a cafe once - and they did - because I had queued for ages to be served then couldn't find a seat. They were saving the table until their own friends got served, but I had bought something and had nowhere to sit. It's really annoying when this happens in a busy place and I am on my own, I don't have another person to save a seat, so am at a disadvantage.

If im with my dd i always get her to sit at a table while i get the food. Never knew that was frowned upon.

My sis once drove into a parking space & nearly knocked dwn an old lady coz she went to step off the kerb. When my sis got out of her car the lady shouted at my sis that she was saving the space for her husband.

"I would always get a table first in a restaurant, surly everyone does this? How else would you know if it was worthwhile ordering or not!"

At the risk of derailing the thread....

Let's say in a busy restaurant people take 5 mins to get their food and pay, and 10 minutes to eat it. If there are 100 groups eating at any given time then you only really need 100 tables, but if every group expects to "save" a table while queueing for food too then suddenly 150 tables are required. It's really inefficient, and in practice means people with food end up standing around while tables are occupied by people with no use for them.

space next to the church and you're the bride?
You're collecting a piece of furniture from the shop next door/making a generous donation to the charity shop? Otherwise, unless you're disabled, have the badge to prove it and the other driver didn't yabu!

True Casper- its simply a more efficient system. Maybe some folk have trouble doing the maths

It is not the same as a self servcie restaurant unless you plan on leaving your kids to stand in the parking space for the full length of time you are parked. :)

People standing in spaces should be ignored or made to move.

Terrible etiquette

this happens near to where we live,people 'reserve' disabled spaces though. We can never park there now despite ds having a blue badge as people get dropped off when there are no spaces, wait till a car leaves then stand in it and phone the driver to come back even if other cars are there waiting they will not budge.

Witnessed a HUGE argument couple days ago over it . it seems to be the new thing to do rather than it being first car there gets to park, instead there are cars waiting unable to park because there are people in the spaces!

My mum did this once, we'd been driving round a car park for ages looking for a spot and saw a woman getting into her car, so I drove round and waited behind her with my indicator on. Another car saw her start to reverse, and shot round the other way, edging forwards as she went backwards IYKWIM, he saw me waiting but was determined to get the spot.

DM jumped out of my car, stomped over to the space and stood there with a face like this . Then as the car reversed all the way out of the space, she followed it and stood with her back to the 'determined' driver's car, grandly waving me into the space.

I was .

ariane5 That is awful. Problem is with being a reasonable person they know you're not going to mow them down so won't move. This is an awful practice. Jesus fuck, not letting someone with a blue badge park in a blue badge space.

Debeez i was so angry when it happened to us the first time (even started a thread !) dont know how to link but it was titled 'reseving disabled parking spaces' or something similar (cant remember exactly).

We have decided now to just do all our shopping on internet to avoid this situation in the local town where we usually go as I do not like dcs witnessing such selfish behaviour and the inevitable confrontation it causes.

Car park spaces and restaurant tables are the same really.

They shouldn't be saved for someone who already has a space or who doesn't yet have any food.

Casper has explained the situation for restaurant tables perfectly.

Your car park spaces question sounds a little more complicated.

If there were other spaces available it shouldn't really matter that you asked your son to do this. I've been asked as a young passenger by my uncle and I hated it, standing in the empty space having grown up drivers glare at me and being scared they would tell me to move.

If there were other spaces it perhaps shouldn't have mattered but it sounds like she wanted the space for the same reason you did, it was shaded. If she was wanting to leave a disabled passenger in the shade and was in her car and ready to pull into the space then really she had every right to claim it, even if as you pointed out to her, there were other unoccupied and closer disabled spaces just not in the shade.

She absolutely should not have driven her car at your son to frighten him into moving.

But how did you manage this? Presumably when you parked in the other space you left your son in the car with the dogs anyway, did you have to walk back and get him or did you call to him to get out and stand in the space while you went back? Could he not have stood on the path under the tree, holding the dogs, while you went inside? How long was your errand likely to be?

ariane5 I don't know how you kept your cool. I dare say I might have became a bit shouty .

How awful that something that has been put in place to help people get out and about is being abused by some twats inconsiderate people to the detriment of the people it's meant to help!

(If I were a traffic warden I'd give them a ticket for standing there unless wearing the blue badge on their person)

Why couldn't your 11yr old just walk the dogs round the car park til you got out?