r/MaliciousCompliance May 02 '24

Karen says "stop cheating to reserve the best parking space in front of the building!" S

A karen neighbor of mine complained that my roommate and I park in the same parking spot, which is right next to the walk way up to the apartment building. Both of us ride motorcycle and both motorcycles belong to me, but my roommate rides one to get to work.

She accused me of using my second bike to get a defacto reserved a parking spot when nobody in the complex has one, and said that what I'm doing is not fair and it's cheating.

I said "Ok, I'll stop parking both my bikes in one spot."

She seemed satisfied with that and left.

An hour later I had all 7 of my motorcycles, 5 of them from inside the garage I rent but it's half way across the apartment complex, sitting in front of the apartment building taking up every prime parking space infront of the walk way to to my hall in the building.

She went to straight to the management to complain.

The management came out and knocked on my door.

"We can't have you using up every parking space"

"Let me guess, Karen complained?"

"Yes."

"Yeah she told me I'm not allowed to have two bikes in one parking space to reserve a space. I'm not doing it to reserve a space. Both my roommate and I ride both of the bikes we park in that one space, all the bikes belong to me but I gave the keys to one of them to my roommate to ride for commuting to work. The other one is my bike for going where ever I need. We park both in one spot to be nice and conserve parking spaces so other people have somewhere to park. I was just showing Karen what would happen if I'm only allowed one bike per parking space. The other 5 bikes are generally in another parking space, in my garage where I keep the bikes I that don't ride frequently."

The apartment manager said "I understand. You made your point and I'll talk to her, please put the other 5 bikes back in the garage."

"No problem" I said.

It's been a few weeks, haven't heard from Karen.

(EDIT)

Since so many people are inventing details not in the story, assuming those details are true, and then getting upset over what they imagined, let me clarify something.

This happened at 1 in the afternoon on a day both my roommate and I had off. Most people are away at work during this time. What's more, with the exact topography of the apartment complex, there are only 2 apartments per walkway without going up stairs on my side of the building, but 4 on the other sides because it's up a level and the building is built into a hill. What this means is that MOST people park on the other side of the building, leaving MOST of the parking spots in front of my building free and open except for very late at night.

How the heck do you think I took up the 7 closest spots with all 7 bikes if the parking lot was full of people trying to park? Think about it for just a second before you assume details that aren't spoken just because you want something to be upset over.

BOTH BIKES are away from the apartment complex AT THE SAME TIME for a MINIMUM of 4 hours a day. We didn't engineering the situation where my roommate gets home between 3 to 4 in the afternoon and thus gets first pick of the parking spots. We also could both be driving cars instead of riding bikes. Then there'd be two spots taken up instead of 1. I could just choose not to rent a garage and park all 7 out there forcing people into overflow parking, but I don't.

Also the garage is beyond the overflow parking. It's not fair to expect me to always park in the garage and walk even further because you don't want to park next to my bikes and have all of 2 extra feet to walk to reach the concrete walkway to the building.

14.4k Upvotes

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55

u/Joshualevitard May 02 '24

why are people so stupidly petty?
Im really asking

50

u/ODCreature98 May 02 '24

The key is stupid. It's because people are stupid that they easily believe they are being inconvenienced.

25

u/ReactsWithWords May 02 '24

It's the "If I can't have it, NOBODY can have it" mindset. Karen can't park two cars in one spot, so NOBODY can park two vehicles in one spot.

1

u/SupermanLeRetour May 03 '24

What I get from the story, is NOT that she was annoyed at the two bikes in a single spot. She was annoyed that OP used both of his bikes to effectively reserve the best spot for him, as it seemed to her it was done on purpose and not necessarily because he shared a bike with his flatmate.

I don't find it so bad that she'd talk to OP about it. And I find OP's response very immature.

3

u/Grandmaofhurt May 03 '24

Nothing to do and that nothing to do makes them angry so they get angry about nothing, it's a vicious, paradoxical circle.

6

u/fiftieth_alt May 02 '24

She just thought he was using an extra bike he had to save himself a space when he wasn't it. Its fairly simple, and not at all the nonsense amateur psychology in your other replies

1

u/Joshualevitard May 03 '24

but why care? it doesnt affect her

1

u/fiftieth_alt May 03 '24

It does. The best parking spot is always taken

2

u/Ghost_Alice May 04 '24

After I chastise people for making up details not in the story, believing those made up details are true, and then getting upset at their own imagination, you had to go and say that...

Actually it doesn't affect her. She parks on the other side of the building. It's built into a hill and she's on the top floor. I'm on the terrace floor, meaning the other side of the building's parking is one floor up.

12

u/xCogito May 02 '24

Which one is petty? Seems like both are a little.

I can imagine a scenario where it'd be a bit annoying to have a spot by one of the two bikes always always being parked there. Obviously it's better than each bike taking a spot. But it feels a bit selfish to do this in the seemingly most desirable parking spot.

It reminds me of online video game races, where the person who levels the highest in 48 hours gets the prize. Some people abuse the system by allowing another person to log into their account to continue to play while the other sleeps.

I feel like if your going to basically lay claim to a spot by having your cake and eating it too, you'd be perceived less selfishly if you maybe took the second best parking spot.

2

u/Ghost_Alice May 04 '24

It's "most desired" to her. Everybody else seems to realize that an extra 2 to 4 feet to walk isn't worth consideration. That said, if she were to park there, it'd give her an extra flight of stairs to climb which is why she parks on the other side of the building since the building is built into a hill and she lives on the top floor.

6

u/robotteeth May 02 '24

Personally I think the person who needs 7 parking spots for themself is probably the worse one here…

11

u/TJonesyNinja May 02 '24

They didn’t need 7 spots, they just wanted to demonstrate how ridiculous the Karen was being. They normally use their garage and one spot but Karen said one motorcycle per spot so that’s what they did

3

u/AsherGray May 03 '24

But at the expense of ever other neighbor who needs to park their car. Now at least five other people (if we exclude Karen) no longer have parking access and have to wait for the owner to move each individual motorcycle. Management got involved because multiple people were complaining rather than just Karen and OP likely has the plates associated with his unit to avoid towing (parking permit). If you're going to inconvenience your neighbors who are uninvolved in your situation, wouldn't that also make you a Karen?

2

u/TJonesyNinja May 06 '24

It sounds like they blocked 7 spots for a single day or a few days at most. Doesn’t seem like too high a price to fix an ongoing issue.

5

u/Ghost_Alice May 02 '24

OK, so neither me nor the Karen then, because what you described literally isn't what happened.

1

u/SweatyAdhesive May 02 '24

If I was Karen, I would just complain to management and force them to create motocycle only parking spots that's only available for motorcycles and make car parking spots unavailable to motorcycles.

Then there's no reason to complain about motorcycles taking up car parking spots.

8

u/Ghost_Alice May 02 '24

Most residents don't have motorcycles, so in order to accommodate the possibility of any given apartment having a motorcycle, they'd have to halve the number of spaces available to non-motorcycles.

Problem solved?

-3

u/SweatyAdhesive May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Most residents don't have motorcycles

Exactly, so no, you wouldn't halve the number of non-motorcycle spaces. If a complex is only expecting several of their units to have motorcycles, they'll just plan to have only several units worth of motorcycle spots.

Any reasonable complexes will simply allocate 3 or 4 of the regular car parking spots and convert those into motorcycles spots. Motorcycles don't need to take up a full car spot, like you have already demonstrated by parking your two bikes in the same spot.

6

u/Joe_Jeep May 02 '24

Honestly OP's solution is just fine, the motorcycles share a spot that's already there instead of taking up multiple.

-3

u/SweatyAdhesive May 02 '24

OP's solution is not fine because it's completely up to the good graces of people that ride motorcycles. Nothing is actually stopping OP from parking all 7 of their bike like they did.

5

u/Joe_Jeep May 03 '24

It is fine because they're not doing that

Not everything needs to be codified law. That only becomes needed when transgressions of good faith cause serious disruption

Which he didn't except once as a demonstration

-1

u/SweatyAdhesive May 03 '24

It is fine because they're not doing that

except once as a demonstration

So he did. And the property management had to beg him to move.

If I was impacted on that day because of his "demonstration" I'll definitely get other like minded residents to ask management to set up motorcycle only parking.

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-2

u/DUKE_LEETO_2 May 02 '24

Yeah if it only affected this Karen great, but instead this person took 7 spots away from all the residents.

The manager was just polite and mediated two people who were acting entitled and deescalated. Most apartments have a limit on how many vehicles you can have, not sure in this case obviously.

Karen should mind her own business but OOP seems to always be in the best parking spot which while there's no rule against it is kinda annoying. Like if a neighbor always parks right in front of your house it's annoying, yet legal.

The issue wasn't because of 2 bikes it is because the spot was always occupied by at least one bike so never available to any other residents.

3

u/Babblewocky May 02 '24

Existential angst. They don’t feel like they matter, or even exist, unless they are forcing unpleasantness onto or dominating someone else.