Would you rather lose a parking space or get in a car accident? I would rather lose a parking space, and I think most people feel the same. However, the chase of the parking space seems to make some people forget the rules of the road, which does not tend improve the greater good. Today I was in a Trader Joes parking lot about to turn right to go down an aisle of parking spaces. Barreling toward me to the right in a perpendicular fashion is a blue BMW 5 Series. The BMW turns right onto the road on which I am driving and cuts me off just so he can make another immediate right onto another parking space aisle that has an empty parking space. I had to slam on my breaks to not hit him.
So after that I was a tad hot in the collar and I turn down an aisle of parking spaces and I see that the end space is open. Then I see that there is a girl walking an empty shopping cart into the parking space and literally leaves this empty shopping cart in the space such that no car can now fit and the shopping cart cannot be easily relocated to a better place. I was almost in disbelief but decided to stay calm and inch into the parking space anyway (there were no other spots available). She turns around and sees me and looks like she's been caught red handed. She gestured to ask if I was going to park in the space and I just shrugged my shoulders and put my hands in the air. She quickly got the cart and took it to the appropriate place to leave it. I am pretty sure this lady knew that she was doing something lazy because she quickly corrected it, but fully blocking a parking space for no reason is not improving the greater good. I bet the parking space would have remained blocked for at least 10 minutes before the cart retrieval employees of Trader Joes came around, but in my opinion that ten minutes matters.
