Our area supermarket expanded last year and now it’s a big warehouse store. There’s like 300 parking spaces, but one of these spaces is reserved for parents with toddlers.

I drive an hour and half to work one way each day. On Wednesday night I was getting back to into town around 9:45pm. I had to go grocery shopping which I mentally anguish thinking about having spent this long in the car. I also had to shit really bad. So I aim for a spot up front near the area where they have the store restrooms. Usually there’s spots at this hour because no one shops this late and the store closes at 11pm. I pull up and discover it’s the reserved parents spot, but oh well.

You can guess what happened. I leave the store and there’s an unkempt smoking dude by my car with his two little kids. Just waiting there for me to shame me for taking the spot. I didn’t confront him. I waited in the store for about 10 minutes until he gave up and took his kids home. I think he ashed his cigarette on my car though.

Now I’m not falling for this. How does this guy know if I’m not a parent with kids? There’s no special tag you’re given to park there. How can the supermarket possibly have a tag system that covers the whole parent population of the county for that one measly space? There’s no fine either, not breaking any laws parking there. What was his plan if I came out with kids? Is he the only parent on Earth that is expected to shop with children at night? What’s disgusting is this guy is subjecting his kids to waiting in the cold to make a point, and a worthless one in my view.

This is one parking space out of 300+ spaces on the property and a surrounding population of over hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them parents. How can any parent with toddlers like this guy have the assurance to expect to park in this one parking space every time they go grocery shopping at this store? You’re competing with all other parents, dude.

When does being a parent suddenly mean you’re not able bodied? I’m not going to park in the handicapped space, I’d never get away with that in a million years. And I’d feel like shit for doing that to a disabled person. And I’m not parking in the “employee of the month” space that was right next to the “parents with toddlers” space, because the employees who get the carts in the parking lot probably know the cars of their coworkers, and I’d catch shit for that.

But my conclusion is this: this guy saw my car in the space and probably thought no one is shopping this late at night on a weekday with their children, and that I must be a non-parent , parking in a space that he probably wouldn’t park in anyway given the amount of competition for the spot. So let’s feel special and make a statement. It’s apparently not enough that they have seats in the shopping carts.