These Are Your Most Frustrating Parking Lot Experiences

Having a car is great. Putting that car somewhere? Well that's a horse of a different color. You need your car to go places and do things, but what happens when parking causes a panic? That's what I asked you about earlier this week, your most stressful, painful parking problems. And, as always, you delivered.

I told you guys about a scary interaction I had in a parking lot, and no one told me I was going it all wrong! Thanks! Nice to have the support of Jalopnik readers. Maybe you let me slide because of parking problems you've had in the past. We've got tales of overcrowded dirt lots, confusing parking garage parking and, as usual, scofflaws who can't be bothered to follow even the clearly marked lines and rules right in front of their faces. One reader was waylaid by Americans' desire to suck down booze during sporting events. Scroll on through to see the worst of the worst parking stories.

In a parking garage, I purposely parked way in the back, next to no other cars. Spots were tight, didn't want any door dings. I don't mind walking. When I got back to my car, person parked right next to me, within 6 inches. No other car on either side of us for 20+ spots. Ugh!

and

I do this at work. I intentionally look for spaces on the end (to cut my chances of a door ding in half) and scoot as far to the side as possible without curbing my wheels. There's someone in a Kia Optima that hasn't been washed since delivery with a rusty roof where the paint peeled away years ago, that seems to seek out my car. No matter where I park (end spots vary each day) I will come out and find that POS next to me with their tires on, or over the line into my space.

From Gnome and Michael Tonelli

Being in Baltimore, MD, I've developed immunity to parking shenanigans, so it's more entertaining than anything else. And the 2 most entertaining ones are seeing folks circling around the gym parking lot endlessly looking for the closest spot, can't waste those precious calories, can we?

The second one, is backing into a tight Best Buy parking lot in a 2 ton dually pickup that quiet literally cannot fit there.

From igmgag

Okay, so more of a parking situation than a parking lot.

When I went to Texas Tech a billion years ago, during weekdays, every road inside the inner ring road was closed to drivers unless you were faculty or had a special parking permit. Students were expected to walk to class or take one of the busses that constantly circled the ring road. Problem was, those busses tended to be PACKED. Like, Tokyo subway packed.

I lived on campus and had a motorcycle with a parking permit. Interestingly, every parking lot inside the ring road had designated motorcycle parking that anyone with a permit could use.

You just couldn't GET to it during the week.

Well, that just seemed like a challenge to college me.

One day, I hopped on my KZ440 LTD, and tucked right in behind one of those busses and followed him right through every checkpoint. Made it to class in record time! Now that I was inside the ring road, the traffic cops assumed I was allowed to be there!

So I did this every day for about a week or so. It was glorious! I had beaten the system!

Then one day as I was basking in the diesel smoke and blasting through the checkpoints, I spotted the motorcycle cop stationed at the booth waiting for me.

I did get off with a warning, but it was the shoe leather express for me from then on.

From Stillnotatony

I once made the mistake of needing to get something from Home depot between Nov 10 and Feb 15th. The reason these dates are important is because you have entered the holiday to Championship NFL game season and the Home Depot shares a parking lot with a Total Wine that is yards from the PA state line as well as a Wawa. For optimal fun the parking lot has 3 entrances and two exits, with 1 exit next to the Wawa (cross traffic here has no stop sign or light) and other next to the Total Wine (cross traffic here only has a stop sign for traffic coming from the right). People were being nice, let 1 person out of a row, then move forward, and the foot traffic leaving the Total Wine was being managed but the Home Depot is as far from the exits as possible and the 600 foot journey to leave took about 45 mins.

From Cluck

Any parking lot ever, people seem to loose their minds.

But one in particular, I worked in a mixed use retail/commercial development that meant for my job I had to park with the public in a parking garage. The garage has a one way entrance, with arrows and signage indicating as much. I was coming back from lunch, coming into the garage and this lady all of a sudden starts turning towards me. I slam on my brakes and turn to avoid her. She then honks at me, in a bewildered look, I just point to the sign above me that says "no exit, entrance only." She honks again and throws up her hands and continues to squeeze past me.

Nothing bad happened, but it is one of those "you clearly could no be more wrong" situations but some people will forever believe they are in the right.

From TheStoned

I'd like to take a moment to vent about narrow spots marked as "Compact"... which I believe should not be allowed to exist, mostly because nobody pays attention to those words anyway.

From WeryPert1

Long while back, in Los Angeles, at the Santa Monica Pier. I enter a parking garage which indicates it has a dozen or so spots open. This was on a fairly busy day, so I was glad to see I would find some parking.

Well, since you're here, you probably know what actually happened. This garage was equipped with the fairly new tech (at the time) of the red/green lights above spaces indicating when a space is free. Unfortunately, all the green light spaces that I encountered were actually occupied by a Smart car, Fiat 500, Mini Cooper, or some other vehicle that was uncommonly short and thus evaded the sensor.

I drove around the garage up, down, and up again, for probably an hour. About halfway through, I let my wife and kids out to go to the Santa Monica Pier. Sometimes I would pass a spot, then see someone leaving in my rearview mirror, only to see another car immediately take that spot.

After about an hour, give or take, I finally was able to park.

These days, fortunately, those red/green light sensors seem to be more capable and able to detect shorter vehicles. But that day at Santa Monica was the most frustrating parking lot experience in my life....so far.

From DynamicPresence

There's a large shopping center with a Costco, Target, Best Buy, Petco, etc., with very poor infrastructure getting in and out of the area, that draws in thousands of cars. There's multiple support roads on the property to get through to specific areas of the parking lot. Most are four lane (two in each direction) with the left lane usually dedicated as a left turn only lane and the right lane as a through lane. The amount of people that can't figure this out is astounding. You'll pull up beside someone in the left lane, expecting them to turn left (as they are in the left turn lane) and then they just proceed straight with you and try to merge two cars into one lane unexpectantly.

Then there's the thunderdome that is the Costco gas station. It's an older one, so it's not far enough removed from the main store/parking lot, so it turns into utter gridlock as cars line up from every direction trying to get into the gas station. They block the only exit so cars can't leave the gas station and then nobody can go anywhere.

From Michael Tonelli

General Frustrating issue is with Parking lots with spaces that are striped in the narrowest possible width. Our favorite Pizza place is located in a strip mall type place that consistently stripes the spots at what feels like the width of every average car thus leaving about 3.5 inches to open your door to get out.

Specific: Back in my college days in Newark NJ, the school was mostly a commuter college with not enough spaces. Typically they'd buy a bunch of buildings, flatten them and use the now dirt lot as parking. You'd get aisles blocked at the end (sometimes both ends), cars three deep or cars just parked blocking you in.

From monsterajr1

Our Whole Foods parking lot is much worse than our Trader Joe's, but that's probably because TJ's lot is shared with other businesses so there are sane people mixed in with the crazies.

The truly worst experience was at Rocky Mountain National Park. You had to park and catch a tram to go further into the park, and if you weren't one of the first people there you had to slowly roam the (admittedly large) lot until the first people started trickling out, and compete against others doing the same. I didn't have the patience for it, and I had to sit on a bench and let my wife do it (which she did in like five minutes).

From 6thtimearound