"Pay Attention Jack-ass!" Or, A Few Thoughts On Canadian (Non-)Confrontation And An Admission Of My Own Paranoia

I came out of a store yesterday afternoon and found this stuck under one of my wiper blades.Actually, I did not see it until I was driving out of the parking lot. I wondered why I had received a ticket. Where I had parked was not part of a handicapped zone. ... Then I noticed that part of the ticket was green. That's when I thought it might be one of those fake tickets. I had another stop maybe two minutes away, so I looked at it then. Yup.

1. This guy was not "waiting for" the parking space. Thinking back on the situation, he was roughly two or three seconds ahead of me and had driven his car past the empty space.

2. Because of this "citation", I believe he had driven past the empty space he wished to park in because he planned on backing up into the space.

2a. Backing up into parking spaces is a strange phenomenon I have found quite common in Canada, though since I lived in New York City for 17 years prior to moving here in 2005 -- and there are not many parking lots in Manhattan and we did not have a car -- maybe this is a fairly common practice since the mid-1980s.

2b. Why do people do this? I will sometimes drive through an empty space to park in the empty space that adjacent to it, so I can drive out of the space when I leave. However, I see no point in backing carefully into a space so I can drive directly out later on. What's the benefit? You either drive in and then back out -- or you back in and then drive out?

3. Regardless, this guy had not yet put his car into reverse when I pulled into the empty space. There were no white taillights. He was not "waiting for" the space. No spot was stolen.

4. I pulled in and got out of my car. He could have upbraided me right then and there. I think he was pulling into a space maybe four or five spaces away from where I was parked -- Oh, what a much longer walk he had to make! -- when I got out of my car. Why not say something then?

4a. Canadians are not big on direct one-on-one confrontations. That's a generalization -- and Laura touched on an aspect of it here -- but this webpage of the Council of Ministers of Education backs me up:

Canadians, in general, avoid conflict and confrontation and thus it is not common for people to intervene directly.

4b. This theory goes right out the fucking window, though, once you get on the highway. If you want or need to change lanes, the driver that you will be pulling in ahead of will speed up to deny you the opportunity to change lanes. Also, if you are on an on-ramp and about to enter highway traffic and someone else is about to get off the highway via an the off-ramp that is a bit ahead of where the on-ramp is letting you in, rather than slow down -- which he has to do anyway to go down the off-ramp -- and pull in behind you -- which makes common sense since at the time he is slowing down, you are accelerating to get up to highway speed, he will stomp on his accelerator like a goddamn maniac, cut directly in front of you, meaning you have to suddenly brake and slow down, THEN he'll get off the highway and slow down.

4c. Though being in a car is not a direct confrontation.

4d. This guy didn't even bother to honk his horn when he saw me pulling into what he believed was his rightful spot in the parking lot.

5. He saw these "citations" in a store, thought "This is what I need in my non-confrontational crusade to 'make the world a better place to park'! Look at all these possible instances I can use then in." and bought them.

6. He keeps them in his car, with a pen.

7. He fucking USES them!

8. After feeling seriously aggrieved, this guy grabs his pad of citations (are they in his glove box? does he keep them on the passenger seat?) and his pen, fills the thing out, gets out of his car, walks over to the car and leaves the citation under a wiper blade -- but only after he has clearly seen the other person go into the store and knows damn well he or she will not be coming right out.

8a. I am 100% sure this was a guy.

8b. And I'm not expecting any confrontation to be necessarily loud or obnoxious or laced with profanity. He could make his case clearly and in a normal tone of voice. He could not bring himself to do even that.

9. He filled in the name of the store (Canadian Tire) -- AND the date! Beautiful!

9a. Checking the appropriate box was not enough. He also circled the "infraction" and added some editorial comment. It also looks like he traced over the X to emphasis his disapproval.

I went over to the shopping centre nearby and parked and went off to buy wine. I came back to put the wine in the car and then go grocery shopping. I had parked aways from the store and now there was a car pulled up in the space next to mine. It seemed odd to park right alongside a car when there were so many other spaces around. A guy was standing near the car talking on a cell phone. I went into the store and started shopping. But now I'm thinking that maybe that was the guy who left the note. Maybe he followed me over here and is going to damage my car. And I'm in here shopping. Shit. After a few minutes of increasing paranoia, I leave the cart and walk out back to my car. The other car is there, but the guy is not. My car seems fine. I fake getting something out of the car, note his license plate, walk back into the store, walk past my cart to a section where I know there is a pencil, and jot down the plate number on my shopping list. I then continue shopping and when I get out, the other car is gone and my car is fine.