A woman said she was left stunned when an “older lady” tried to hurry her out of a parking space — and now she’s wondering who was really in the wrong.
She shared her story in the “Am I Being Unreasonable?” forum on the U.K.-based community site Mumsnet.com, where users often seek opinions and advice on everyday dilemmas. The woman explained that after leaving the gym one morning, she decided to stay in her car for a few minutes to handle some personal admin.
“I sat in my car to send a difficult email [related to] bereavement — and I did this there so I could leave it behind and come home and focus on the day,” she wrote. “It would have taken about five or six minutes.”
But before she could finish, an “older lady” knocked on her window and asked if she was about to leave.
The poster said she replied that she’d need another five minutes, but the woman then suggested she “just pull out and wait somewhere [else].”
The original poster (OP) said she had noticed the other driver enter the lot moments earlier and realized the woman hadn’t checked the overflow parking area before approaching her — a move that left her “gobsmacked.”
“When I left, there were a couple of empty spaces, but by then she’d parked on the grass verge on the exit road,” she continued, before turning to the Mumsnet community to ask who was in the wrong.
Some commenters felt the OP was at fault, calling her actions inconsiderate toward other gym goers.
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“Could you not have just left and pulled over somewhere else to send the email?” one person asked. “The parking lot is for the gym, not for sitting in your car and sending emails. Fine if it’s not busy, but when there are only a few parking spaces it’s a bit s—. The content of the email doesn’t really change anything.”
Another added, “Yabu [you are being unreasonable]. It’s a parking lot, not an office, and space was limited.”
Others defended the OP, saying the other driver overreacted.
“It’s absolutely fine to sit in a car and send a few emails. If you’d sat in the reception of the gym and done it nobody would have noticed or cared and it would have had the same impact on the other driver,” one user wrote.
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Another commenter took a balanced view, saying both parties shared some responsibility.
“[You] both [are] as bad as each other,” they said. “The lot was busy. It’s for parking and using the gym, not doing admin. She was being unreasonable [for] not going to the overflows. But that doesn’t excuse you from using a premium car park space to do ‘stuff’ you could do elsewhere.”
