To have asked if the lady had children with her in parent and child space?

[CoffeeCoffeeCoffeeCat]

So I know I probably was being unreasonable (pregnant, hormonal, toddler playing up royally that day!) but I just wondered how long I needed to feel mortified for.
Waiting to pull into a parent and child space but due to layout of car park other car got there first. Lady got out, locked car, started walking away. I couldn't see any child or car seat in the car from my view, so pressumed she was doing my massive bug bear of using P&C space with no child. So I wound down my window to call her out on it.
Coffe "Excuse me, how many children do you have with you to park in that space?!"
Lady "What?"
Coffee "It's a parent and child parking space for people with children!"
Lady"Of course I've got a child with me"
Coffe (hands shooting up to mouth in dismay) "have you? Oh I'm so sorry."
Lady (extremely cross) "don't you judge me, how dare you"
Coffee "I am sorry, you must hate it when people park in these spaces without kids too tho? I didn't realise"
Lady-storms off sending me evils.

I wasn't judging her and unsure how she thought I was, just when she locked the car and went to walk off without getting a child out, it looks like you dont have a kid with you surely! She was going to get a trolley which was obviously fine, and I won't be questioning anyone about their accompanying child status again, but it was a fair enough assumption no?? And I wasn't agressive about it at all!
Had to do my shop in Sainsbury's instead of Aldi as that's where she headed, and I was too miserable/embarrassed to bump into her.
Small local area and now living in fear of bumping into her
How unreasonable was I?!

Francis, making parents lives easier IS the marketing ploy you are talking about.

Well legoland doesn't have P&C spaces does it? Yet they still manage a perfectly achievable marketing ploy of getting parents in, that's probably because you still don't have the problems of tight spaces to open doors and get car seats out and get buggies out of boots in confined spaces...oh wait!

Francis, it about the space for most parents, the proximity is the lesser of the benefits.

I don't know what you think we're all 'falling for'. Do you think there's some dastardly plan behind it all? Or are they just trying to make parents think shopping with toddlers is slightly less hell on earth so we'll come shopping and spend our money. It's pretty obvious. I don't think they're trying to catch us out.

What really worries me is the sense of helplessness these spaces cause with some parents. If you can't park your car without it being in a super sized space you either need a smaller car or to sell it and get the bus!

Ah it's okay FrancisCrawford they've obviously never visited such places - they'd break our in a cold sweat at the mere thought of no p&c spaces and they're not being nowhere near enough space

*out not our

Plus it would deprive all those who never got to be prefects at school the chance to try to boss people about.

Oi! Leave us prefects out of this!

FrancisCrawford

Oh, like last week parking in a multi-storey the only space left was one next to a pillar. If I parked in front ways I wouldn't be able to get the baby out as next to the pillar. So reversed into the space, this meant I couldn't get the buggy out easily. This meant I had to park slightly forward to get the buggy out of the boot and position it in front of the next parked car, get the baby and then reverse properly into the space. When going back into the car, had to do the same in reverse.

Obviously, I would prefer not to leave my baby in the buggy whilst manoeuvring the car into small car spaces, but lots of selfish cunts think it's perfectly acceptable to park in P&C spaces

I would never use one of the spaces as I dont have kids but I would never even think to ask if someone has kids. You cannot know what is happening, what has happened and what will happen. The kids could be in the shop already and the parent has parked there for when its time to go. It is the arrogance of the parking police that I find interesting.

The same goes for disabled spots.

cmj

Surely you could have just left the empty pram in front of the next car and then got he baby out if it worried you that much?

Either way you a) coped (proving the spaces aren't a necessity!) and b) have no idea who was parked in the p and c spaces or why!

I'm surprised there are any 20 and 30 somethings left in this country. Surely they starved to death when their parents had to sadly return home due to not being able to open their car doors in the pre supermarket P&C space days. ;)

I'm surprised there are any 20 and 30 somethings left in this country.

Not necessarily brownpurse. I'm 30. But I'm one of those rare exceptions / selfish cunts who managed to get to adult hood, I mean it were tuff and all innit with no p&c spaces or buggy spaces on buses, I even managed to fold a double by myself without losing either kid! But then I also grew up with eleventy million cousins and we all thought we'd hit the jackpot if we got to sit in the footwell of the car. Simple pleasures and all that

It does make me cross when I see people without kids using a p and c space. I had 2 kids 15 months apart and both were with me full time until the youngest was 1 and those spaces made my life so much easier! I used to get cross when I didn't get a p&c space and I could see parents using one who only had a 4 year old, yes I was definitely BU!

However I would never challenge anyone, obviously they could have kids you haven't clocked, or there could be lots of other reasons someone has ended up using a p&c space. I was once rudely challenged by a man who thought I was using disabled space when I was actually using a p&c one. Lots of people wrongly think they are disabled spaces though, so I politely explained it was p&c. He then demanded to know where my children were (I was collecting a trolley first). He then watched me wrestle 20mo into the trolley before strapping 5mo onto my chest. I'd like to say that I held my head high in righteous indignation as he must have felt quite stupid for challenging me as I obviously needed that bloody space. Instead I went into the shop and had a little cry! It was tough enough getting the two of them to the shops without being criticised and scrutinised.

My mother had a six year old and a newborn to deal with (me, and my younger sister), plus two extremely bad knees from an accident before I was born (they were both replaced last year, but until then she walked with a lot of pain and a noticeable limp).

They didn't have P&C nonsense when I was a child, and yet somehow my mother managed. It can be done. It may not be easy, but it CAN be done. And you had a choice - you chose to have your children. Disabled people did not choose to be disabled.

The problem is that we as a society have started this completely stupid thing where we're expected to wrap parents in cotton wool and revere them for the simple act of birthing a child. See, most rational parents just get on with it. It's the few, the spoiled, and the entitled who push for special treatment and then start whining (at best), arguing (worse), and picking fights (worst case scenario) when they don't get what they think they're entitled to.

The thing is, this is a marketing tool, used by retailers to try to encourage a specific demographic to shop at their stores. I'm not sure that people have an inherent sense of entitlement, more that they are conditioned by retailers to expect this.

20 years ago, there wasn't internet shopping, or loyalty cards either, but we often make consumer choices based on these marketing initiatives - that's why they are there.

So if a consumer makes a purchasing decision to visit a store BECAUSE they have P&C spaces, and this has been marketed to them as a unique selling point of the store, and indeed the store has probably got plenty of free PR because they are so family friendly etc, I don't think it is a sense of 'entitlement' that the consumer has, rather they have been conditioned by the marketing of the retailer to expect this facility and to make consumer choices because the retailer offers this facility.

Where the whole thing falls down is that it should be the store themselves that police this and ensure that there are P&C spaces only available to those that meet the criteria but of course they don't care who is parked in any space as long as they are spending money there.

So reallly, we should complain directly to the stores that they are not fulfilling their side of the deal, and not the person parking in the space. Make enough of a fuss and something will happen.

I would be very interested to see a reverse AIBU where someone asks if they are AIBU to park in a P&C space because they have a lovely new big SUV that they don't want scratched and they feel it is the height of entitlement that those with young kids should expect dibs on those places.

Wanting to go shopping in a supermarket because its marketed as family friendly is fine.
Accosting random strangers and expecting them to give you a run down of their medical history or how many children they have with them = entitlement. Most people manage not to be that batshit.