How do you handle unprovoked hostility?

That would leave a bad taste in my mouth, too. My main concern would be that if they were so upset, they might do something to my car. I just saw a photo on FB where someone tied a zip tie attached to a shopping cart to someone’s driver’s side door, as “payment” for a bad parking spot. I see things all the time about things people do as “revenge” for bad parking.

I think some view bad parking as greedy or inconsiderate. Sometimes, people may purposely park taking up two spots so nobody bangs their door.

If I were you, I’d try to forget the episode occurred. I’d also try to park more carefully in the future, mainly, as I said, because I’d not want to take the chance of someone doing something stupid to my car as revenge.

Yes, I agree. As I said I wasn’t taking up two spots but I agree I could have parked better.

I’d blow it off. Wouldn’t waste the time thinking about.

I think it’s sort of funny, some idiot leaving an anonymous email. The thing is, if you had been there in person, he/she would have been a coward and not said a word.

I park in a lot where there are assigned spaces and there is also an area of unassigned spaces. This is outside my job. Half the lot belongs to my employer and the other half is for the neighboring business. Many people who come there have no clue what’s what and they end up parking in the assigned spots that belong to my employer. If they park in my spot, I tell them off. First of all, there’s a sign outside the lot that states that it’s for the government workers. Second of all, I’d like them to pay attention next time. Some of them explain that they’re only parking for a few minutes while they go into the business next door. If someone who pays for that spot comes in to work in the morning or comes back from lunch and has to wait, not knowing when and if the car owner is going to be there to move his car, and the spot owner is late returning to work, it causes a whole bunch of problems and misery for the spot owner (the legitimate owner). I am not one to yell at strangers but when someone parks in my spot, they hear it from me. I’ve also had some nice conversations with people and even made a friend when I explained to her why it’s an issue and where she should be parking.

That would upset me, too. We all do some bad parking jobs on occasion. Another driver’s reaction should be mild annoyance at most, and certainly not hateful aggression.

Earlier this summer, I woke up to a nasty note on my own car. Someone accused me of nearly running over his/her dog, the evening before, while talking on my cellphone. First, I’d been home doing laundry the previous evening and hadn’t driven anywhere. Second, I don’t have a cellphone!

It’s the gutless anonymity that really irks me. It’s impossible to respond to such notes or defend oneself.

Seriously? I laugh, works wonders & belittles the aggressor to the point where they become irrelevant.

Just try to remember that anyone, especially a perfect stranger, that resorts to such crude remarks is, most likely, a younger person with the IQ and EQ of a Hamster. It’s like posting to youtube videos. Recently I was watching a video on funny babies and toddlers and there was a clip of a dog licking the open mouth of a toddler . The dog, literally, had it’s tongue inside the babies mouth, I rarely comment on youtube but posted ” Ewwww, the dog licking the baby in the mouth” and I was promptly told I was a “teenage bitch.” LMAO.

Part of the problem is getting caught unawares. Crazy-aggression will always trump reasonableness, because it’s so unexpected and outrageous. Even the most clever among us is usually left at a loss for what to do or say, and, yes, we’re bruised by the hostility.

I would have pictured his expression on receiving the note, “Actually, it’s vaginaface, and I’m sorry that your penis is so small that it necessitated purchasing a vehicle too wide to fit between the lines of a standard parking space.” and laughed my damn head all the way out of the parking lot.

What can you do? Be grateful that you’ll never know who wrote it, so that there was no risk of a physical or verbal altercation. Being angry about it accomplishes nothing, so you let it go.

I would be thankful to have been wished a good day, and even more thankful not to have had the conversation face-to-face. But even when I’m running late or in a hurry I try not to park like a whatchamacallit. The other thing that I routinely do while parking is park at the “empty end” of the parking lot and enjoy the walk – which I really need, anyway.

I was thinking about this just the other day due to an incident of my own with a rude stranger. It always bothers me a lot and I have trouble shaking it off. I just don’t understand why some people feel the need to go out of their way to be mean. I never know how to respond – if it’s in person I’m usually too flustered to do anything but apologize.

Well some people are like that and you will have to deal with it..if it’s your fault then saying sorry is the best policy. But if it isn’t then you shouldn’t be apologetic.

@imrainmaker Unless you’re Canadian.

I get anxious and avoid the area for a while. Up to a year or more. Edit and I order a pizza or kfc.

I answer with snark.

Hubby meets the aggression and accelerates it. Usually causes the aggressor to reconsider their course of action.

@janbb At least you weren’t there to have maybe, coffee thrown at your face.

By going on with my day and not letting it take the rest of my day down, that is how I would handle it.

I’m wound up so tight lately that little things really get to me, but that note wouldn’t get to me as long as nothing was done to my car. I do think I might recite the note as you did to my friends, but I’d also be thinking the guy who left the note needs to chill out. He doesn’t know that maybe the person next to you was parked crooked, so you squeezed on crooked too.

It’s frustrating when people park badly when the spaces are very tight, but his reaction was over the top. I think almost everyone has done some bad parking jobs.

To offer another example that I see on an almost daily basis, and sometimes multiple times in a single day: I play cards online. Specifically, I play Spades (though I would imagine the scenario occurs with any number of – especially – partnership or team games of all kinds where one team is going to win and the other … not). I’m a good to very good Spades player, but I’m not perfect. And Spades is a good game in that it’s not all luck (though the luck of the deal can certainly swing a game one way or another), so there are strategy, bluff, deception and other elements of good game-playing involved.

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been called the worst kind of blockhead, ignoramus, moron, loser, cretin or any other synonym you want to apply to “bad card player”. But I’m really – you’d have to take my word for it – not bad at all. Though I can make errors in judgment, strategy, when to bluff and when not to, etc. – and the errors can indeed look foolish, especially in retrospect, sometimes. Depending on when a mistake is made and how crucial it is, it can lose a game that should otherwise have been won, too. It happens. And I’m a GOOD player. There are any number of new, inexperienced, confused, inattentive or simply careless players around, too. So the epithets can really fly. (I try exceedingly hard not to throw the first one, and I am proud that I have a better than 99% success rate at holding my tongue unless I’m unfairly fired upon first. (When I really do make a dumb or inattentive mistake, then I just shut up about it entirely, because at that point apologies don’t matter with a partner who is after your head.)

However … not all of the criticism is entirely unwarranted. Most of the worst criticism is unwarranted, frustration, a player who is so bad in his own right that he can’t even see that you’ve been making allowances all along for his own mistakes, and so on. So when I get accused on those times – and it’s not that it happens to me every day, but certainly it happens at least weekly – then I try to look beyond the viciousness of the insult, complaint or simple verbal assault, and learn whatever lesson I can about playing better. (Or sometimes about picking better partners to play with.) And I will say that even though there are some players that I will never play with again if I can help it, regardless of their skill level, I have managed to improve my own game, even if sometimes the spur was vicious criticism.

So, if you can, ignore the vile rudeness of the “nature” of the complaint, and take the lesson to heart: When you’re parking in a busy public place, take the time and care not just to “stay inside a line painted on the parking surface”, but to do that equitably, so that no one on either side should be inconvenienced by your parking. And watch out too for whoever leaves a note that is so nasty and over-the-top over something that is, really, not such a big deal.

@janbb: Was the lot pretty full and so there were limited spaces?

@dappled_leaves – What’s different with the Canadians?

Oh I am a pragmatic person and I can easily ignore such thing. Although this sounds selfish you could just remember that your wellbeing is the most important thing. No harm is done to you and you’ve done what you needed to do, end of story. It’s not worth your while to even consider people that are insignificant to your life.

In the future, it will take about ten seconds to back out and straighten the car out.

@jca I’m not really asking for solutions to the parking problem, the question was how you react to inappropriate hostility. I don’t think an admittedly bad parking job which did not take up more than one space warrants being called a dickface. Maybe your world is different.

@janbb: Not saying you deserved to be called names. Was just trying to figure out what, if anything, you did that really ticked the person off or could be avoided in the future to try to prevent it.

@jca Oh sure. I usually do straighten and will probably be even more aware of it in the future but the reaction did seem disproportionate. And I do think there is a tendency towards uncivil anger today so there is a line between altering one’s behavior but also not getting too perturbed when it does happen to you.

@imrainmaker A typical example of Canadian behaviour is apologizing to someone who just bumped into you in the street. We apologize to everyone. It’s a thing.

The other day my husband was driving my car to and from the grocery store.

I drive this gold station wagon. The back seat is covered with a giant hand-crocheted, rainbow blanket. There’s a Pokemon Go sticker on the back windshield and a Yankee Candle Company “car jar” hanging from the rearview mirror.

This is a Woman’s Car, if you were going to pick one out of a lineup.

So this dude squeals out of the little league baseball park in front of my husband, running a stop sign in the process. Mitch has to slam on the brakes to avoid damaging my car.

The guy stopped at the next stop sign, and got out of the car, and marched to my car like he was on a mission to tell Mitch how much that near-wreck was his fault.

Mitch got out of the car.

My husband is… well… this guy

He didn’t get the words, “You better get back in that car, motherfucker” all the way out before the man became completely pale and ran back to apologise to his children for being a failure and rush home to change his pants.

Which is smart of Baseball Dad. The last time that happened it came to blows and the other dude lost.

For me it always depends on who the anger is coming from. In your situation I would turn the note into a paper airplane and “meh” my way out of the parking lot.

People who blow their tops like that have something going on in their lives that make them that explosive. I try to live my life by bringing some happiness to everyone I meet.

@tranquilsea I tore it to shreds. And – good to see you!!

Good to see you too! You can thank Cruiser :P He sent me a PM that hit my e-mail :)

Oh and I have had to deal with people like you describe. I usually walk away worried about them and how they deal with life. Stressing out that much at small things is not good. I tell my kids, “I only have to see and deal with them for 30 seconds. THEY have to deal with themselves their whole lives”

^^GA !!!

One of my FB friends is a former coworker, retired and moved to NC. She just wrote on FB that she parked in a spot between a motorcycle and a car and when she returned to her car, someone took chalk and make brackets around her car and wrote “I park like a dick.” People commented that only a crazy person carries chalk around with them.