Leaving a parking space because someone else wants it

[Allisnotlost1]

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.

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

And waited even longer just to piss her off!

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.

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

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.,

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

You're nice, aren't you?

She’s perhaps got a mobility issue and wants to park as close as possible to the gym ?

Why do we need to know she was an older lady, for “visualisation purposes”? This sounds like one of those awful “check out this Karen” YouTube films.

That's what I was thinking

There's nothing wrong with using a parking space that you've paid for to do something in the car. If you did it in the gym reception then no-one would have been any the wiser.

She shouldn't have driven the wrong way around, and she should have just gone to the overflow parking. Wanting a certain parking spot that someone else is using is unreasonable.

Youre nice

I never understand the posters who are so nasty about someone wanting a parking space for a genuine reason. The woman was there to use the gym. You wanted somewhere to sit and answer emails. She takes priority, she wanted to use the gym.
There was a really spiteful post on here from a poster who boasted about seeing her sister's neighbour desperately trying to park near the house so she could unload her three kids and shopping. The poster decided not to leave ( she didn't live in the road) but went back into her sister's house so they could laugh at the increasing desperation of the neighbour. The poster proclaimed smugly that no on owned road side parking.
I would not feel proud of myself for being unkind and unhelpful. One day, you may need a favour. I hope you find that give and take is important.

This is why I always sit in the passenger seat if I go back to my car but am not intending to drive off straight away.

Can't be doing with feeling rushed to leave.

I'd have moved. You were both unreasonable.

lol, definitely not. I imagine that it would be read differently if a man had approached me than a woman. To me it made no difference. I’m also of ‘Karen age’.

for those suggesting, she also didn’t have a mobility problem, and there is nowhere (other than the other two also very close car parks) to pull over without being antisocial (eg parking on the grass verge or making it awkward for others.

And while yes I agree it’s not relevant what someone is doing by delaying, I wasn’t justifying it on that basis - just giving info. I honestly would never dream of asking someone to move for nothing other than my own convenience.

Yanbu. The car park space is first come first served and presumably doesn't have restrictions that you must be exercising or changing/showering 100% of the time you are parked. You ould legitimately have done the emails sitting in the gym cafe and not been parked for any different length of time. She was being unreasonable, you weren't.

You must be new here, and to the concept of forums and life in general.

That’s not quite right - I’d left the gym a minute earlier and there are two overflow car parks within less than a minute extra walking.

That’s not at all comparable to deliberately making someone suffer!

Good point!

Why does this stuff need a thread.

Either move or don't and just get on with your life.

Oh the irony 😂