Car park criminals

One thing that really peeves me is the car park criminal. You'll know them, we've all seen them - they help themselves to parent parking spaces WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE CHILDREN WITH THEM.

There are two main personalities - the brazen, and the discreet.

The brazen will pull in, hop out and walk with confidence. You will be aware of them because they leave in their wake silently enraged people with kids who watch their progress into the store with slightly slack jaws and quickened pulse.

Then you have the discreet, who will leave someone in the car, usually with the radio on and the window down a crack, and oftentimes with the engine still purring, suggesting the theft of the parking bay is only temporary. 

Please, feel free. On behalf of those of us with kids in the car, I can say with complete irony that we are happy to hang around waiting for the one parent-friendly concession we are entitled to, to become available. Don't trouble yourselves. I'm British and I shall simply allow this to ruin the rest of my day, and probably that of my husband's when he returns home this evening.

Actually, that's not exactly true. Once have I been so enraged I did anything about it. I approached the customer services desk of a well-known food hall positioned some way out of the big town near here, to raise my concerns - namely I had struggled in with a 2-year old and an 8-month pregnant belly from the far end of the car park because someone in a white van (no preconceptions here, just reporting facts) had beaten me into the last parent place, in prime position outside. I wouldn't mind, but not one of the three lads in various combinations of high visibility clothes even had the decency to pretend to limp.

I couldn't hope that the young gentleman in front of me would understand the pressure I was under. A whinging toddler and the pressing urgency of a third trimester bladder had been my constant companions for more than an hour already. Worse, I was still shaking from the attempts to manoeuvre my car into the last space available, regrettably positioned outside the KFC (vom) and immediately adjacent to a small fleet of trolleys, which some more minor car park criminals (the trolley runaway) hadn't returned to the mother-shed. Why would a superior power decide that the perfect time to relieve you of spatial awareness is just when you're coming to terms with a baby bump, baby brain and bugger-I-can't-see-my-feet syndrome.

Anyway, moving on from the back story, the gentleman wasn't able to do more than say he understood that I was frustrated but that the car park was managed by a company. He did offer me a drink in the restaurant while I got my breath back, and he gave my daughter a banana - after all, this wasn't just a customer service gentleman, this was a ... you known the rest...

So to that parking-management company, is there a question about equality that needs to be raised? Proportionally, how many parents are needed, in the same way disabled space quota is determined, as a percentage of the customer base? And is this adequately represented in your average car park?

It seems to be generally accepted that, in the event the disabled bays are full (leaving aside the question of how many of them are legitimately in use), the parent spaces are an alternative. I wonder (and rant, but am too socially anxious to try) whether the mummies and daddies of the UK would be vilified if we adopted disabled parking spaces as our very own overflow.

For everyone who has had to negotiate store car parks with any number of children in the back seat, you have my sympathy. Online shopping - it's the answer.