Customers and large parking lot geometry

[Waggy6]

I think I can separate this into 3 complaints/observations.

Fire lane...

My local grocery store has one main entrance for cars which leads you to the drive between the parking aisles and the store. The is not a lot of extra space, and there is a clearly defined fire lane against the side of the building (hashmarks and signage).
How often are cars parked here unattended? ( I think you all know the answer)... all the time. I'm willing to overlook the people that are waiting in the car for someone, or maybe all the handicap spaces are full, but this only accounts for about 1/4 of the people there, the rest are just "running in real quick" which apparently exempts them from the rules.
Some customers have found a way to be even more annoying. You see, on either side of the entrance to the store there is enough room fore 1 car each way plus the fire lane, so , while its annoying, the cars in the fire lane don't disrupt traffic. Of course people decide to drop of passengers or even pickup and load the trunk in the narrow space directly in front of the entrance, blocking 1 direction of traffic and also the handicap ramp for those who are far less mobile but respect the rules enough to park in a space.

Parking in the lane nearest the entrance.

Next time you are in a large parking lot see if the people there do the same thing as here. As a large parking lot fills up people naturally park in the aisle closest the the door to the business. Makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me is people continue to park in that same aisle 15 cars away from the door when the next aisle closer has 1 or 2 cars parked in it. I'm sure people perceive the aisle that lines up with the door as the closest but at some point surely it must be obvious that space 2, 1 aisle over is far closer than space 20 at the far opposite end of the parking lot.


The previous ^ plus additional stupid.

At my college town, at the Mart of wall the above happened to the greatest degree I have ever seen, 30 cars in the aisle lined up with entrance and none 1 aisle over, but this is a comment I heard 18 years ago that still gets me.
On noticing while walking 1/4 mile the the entrance, (I meanwhile parked closer) I heard this statement: "If there weren't all these handicap parking spaces we could have parked right in front." What I thought then, and still now is "no, those spaces would be filled by the people here before you, you would have been able to park <amount of handicap spaces currently reserved> closer the the door." It hurts my brain to this day.

[PastryGal]

Here where I live most stores had to start putting pylons in the fire lane because people were getting hit coming out of the store because the cars sitting in the fire lane were blocking the people coming out from seeing and people driving from seeing the people coming out.

[notalwaysright]

The grocery store I shop at the most has the weirdest parking lot. We're not exactly Manhattan, we don't suffer from lack of space, but the store obviously didn't want to buy even one square foot more of property so... It's odd. I'd can't even describe it, but people park everywhere. In the clearly illegal places, and anywhere else there is room. I park very far away, because I don't mind walking, and also I don't want to get hit by the psychos jockeying for a space. I hate exiting the lot, because the way I need to go is in front of the store. Yeah, everyone just wanders in front of me like they have moss growing where their brain should be.

I get super annoyed when I see unattended cars in front of the office supply store in the shopping center shared by the store I work at. It's a fire zone. What in that place is life or death?? There actually are concrete pylons, too. People park right next to them, blocking the front entrance/exit of the store. I'm a rule person, I like structure, and it just irks me when people completely ignore rules (especially these totally valid rules which are in place for everyone's safety) for their own convenience.

[Shyla]

I was in the office supply store one day. I was waiting in line to check out. The woman in front of me kept saying she hoped she didn't get a ticket. She had parked in the fire lane in front of the store. Only 2 other parking spaces were taken, lots of close parking available. I found myself wishing she would get a ticket. No such luck.

[Gilhelmi]

I love people who park in Fire Lanes. heheehehheheehehhe

I think "hosing" is awesome.

[sirwired]

You almost hope they'll be a minor emergency and the guy driving the fire truck will deliberately ram the offender out of the way.

[Waggy6]

The grocery store I use as an example in this thread also is the one that 2 local fire departments shop at, so the firefighters must be aware of the issue.

The firefighters do not park their fire truck in the firelane when they do their grocery shopping.

[KuariKaydrith]

Here where I live most stores had to start putting pylons in the fire lane because people were getting hit coming out of the store because the cars sitting in the fire lane were blocking the people coming out from seeing and people driving from seeing the people coming out.

I live in the same city, and I have almost gotten nailed by vehicles due to these idiots who pull into the fire lane/marked crosswalk. Unfortunately the pylons still don't deter everybody because people still pull up beside the pylons and cause the same sort of problems. Mind you, it probably doesn't help that people walking out of these stores don't usually use the marked crosswalk.

[Cecily]

I used to work at a chemical plant. Parking rules were very strict and enforced, no questions asked. Everyone parked outside the plant perimeter and walked to their buildings. The few vehicles inside the plant were there to transport materials/parts from one building to the other and they had assigned parking places at each building.

Some Big Cheese who probably never worked manually a single day in his life decided to park his nice car inside the plant and didn't listen to anyone, he was large and in charge and he would park there! The thing is that we had a scheduled but unannounced fire drill for that day, so everyone did what they were supposed to do. Including using a fork lift to remove the car. Let's just say the fork lift operator did use the "delicate" setting. Big cheese was not happy about it, but rules are rules and no one admited to driving the lift or even knowing who did.

[wolfie]

Also, some stores count on the "no parking" areas (such as fire lanes) being unoccupied when laying out the access routes to the loading bay. Jerks parking there could easily block a truck from getting into the loading bay with a delivery (or out again after finishing the delivery).

[Gilhelmi]

Big cheese was not happy about it, but rules are rules and no one admited to driving the lift or even knowing who did.

"Sir, I have no idea who did it. But I am sure they mistakenly thought that your car was part of the fire drill and as such followed proper fire protocols." *you have to say that with a strait face in order to make it work.*

[DGoddessChardonnay]

The grocery store I use as an example in this thread also is the one that 2 local fire departments shop at, so the firefighters must be aware of the issue.

The firefighters do not park their fire truck in the firelane when they do their grocery shopping.

And I bet if any of the fire crews came by to do their shopping and saw cars in the firelane they would say something about it pronto.

We have crews from at least 2 nearby stations that do their shopping at our store as well. They always park their truck out in the FAR end of the lot, which as large as the average fire truck is, they need the extra space.

[Slave to the Phone]

I once and only once parked in the fire lane to visit my bf. In my defense, it wasn't marked as such, but he came out and yelled at me. WTF are you doing? Don't you know that fire trucks might need to be there? Do you want me to die in a fire?

(At that moment, I might have thought that it was a good idea.)

[workerbee222]

I work in a small city. The official motto of the city is "Resurgam" but unofficially it is "violators will be towed." Parking downtown stinks.

One season, the owner of a resale store decided he ought to open a sandwich shop. His new cook found a car length spot with no meter, and decided to park his car there. Around 1 pm, a man stepped into our store (next to the sandwich shop) and nicely asked if it was one of us *parked across the entrance to the driveway* as he had to take his wife to the hospital. No, we said, try the sandwich shop next door. They're all new there. The cook was alerted and had a tantrum about moving his car. It was an amazing thing to watch.
The sandwich store limped along for a little over a year. The owner blamed protesters for ruining his business, but truthfully the rest of his staff had no more people skills than his cook

[Valentinian]

I've been known to park in the first lane of a parking lot even though some empty spots in the second lane were closer to the store entrance... but only because that meant I could walk to the entrance via the sidewalk, instead of playing dodge-the-cars. That parking lot isn't well designed IMO, there's nowhere to walk between cars without being in the driving lanes.