In parent and child parking spaces no one can hear you scream…

There are some people who have to park the closest they possibly can to the front doors of their supermarket, no matter what. It’s never been top of my priority list I have to say as it’s only ever been a short hop, skip and a jump to the store. Having young children, especially if you are shopping on your own with them, can change all that.

The battle to and from the store is often as big as the one round the supermarket – wanting to be in the trolley, out the trolley and the tantrums in the cheese aisle that make you look like the worlds worst parent. Ah, thank goodness for parent and child parking bays then. They are nice and close to the store and are generally wider bays or have extra space between the bays, perfect for those cumbersome buggies and getting kids and car seats etc safely out of cars. No more having to squeeze down cars and face certain death like the James Franco character in the Danny Boyle film 127 Hours as you crush your ribs trying to inch pass the car that is parked ridiculously close to yours.

Not so…turns out the typically buggy painted parking spots are being snapped up. The people nabbing them might be parents but their kids are older than me! I have to say that the sports car featured is for illustrative purposes only and wasn’t driven by any of the folks I’ve come into contact with. Whoever it is ‘he’ is certainly parked like an utter cock!!

Most of the time, and this is only from my own experience, the culprits are Jurassic parkers, aged 70 plus. Thing is if we parked in their spaces (with child) they’d be shouting blue murder but it seems to be perfectly fine for them to park their cars in parent and child spaces. I believe the clue is in the title.

Yes, some of the people who are parking in these spaces may well have fought in the last war for our freedom. They should know better then and stop invading parent and child spaces as if the spaces were Poland!

I brought the subject up, parking not Poland that is, with an elderly gent who was parking in a parent and child bay in my nearest Tesco. He announced it was fair game as it was a busy day, he was busy and there were no disabled bays as other people nicked them. So, basically it tough tits on my part. As tempting as it was to go all D-FENS, the Michael Douglas character in Falling Down, I felt it wasn’t worth inducing cardiac arrest in me or the old chap.

I did mention the continually poor situation with the security staff at Tesco but they said they could do nothing about it so we’d have to speak to the help desk. More very little helps than Every Little Helps.

It happened again today in Aldi, which has sparked this entry, an elderly woman this time. She didn’t nab our space but parked in the parent and child space next to us despite there being several clearly empty disabled bays. That noise you can hear, it’s the grinding of my teeth.

I’ll be contacting several stores to find out how they ‘police’ such spaces and what they do when such issues arise. I’d love to hear if any other parents have encountered such issues or confrontations or indeed what the solution is. Should they be combined disabled/parent and child bays for instance? 

The title of this blog entry played on the tagline for Alien, well now, rather neatly stealing its sequels tagline, this time it’s war!