Yes, my life is vanilla if this is the kind of thing that upsets me, but it left me feeling upset and even wondering if somehow I was out of line here despite the fact that I was just trying to be reasonably considerate of another parent.

Arriving for parent-teacher conferences, I lucked on a good parking spot, second from pole position (next to the reserved Nurse/Principal/Etc. spots). Only problem was that the car in the pole position spot was several inches over the line into the spot that was open.

I parked. Not a lot of space for the poorly parked driver to get in on her drivers' side, but I had my car as far over to the side of my spot as I could reasonably get it, and she would still be able to get out of the parking spot.

While heading into the building I saw a mom and daughter I recognized heading for the car. I stopped.

The interaction, as verbatim as I can remember it:

Me: "Can you get in? I can back out if you need me to."

Her: "I don't think so. You shouldn't have parked me in like that."

Me: "Well, if you look, you were way over the line; I tried to give you as much space as possible, but let me back out real quick."

Her: "I don't CARE if I was over the line, you shouldn't have parked there!"

Me, getting into my car: "Ma'am, I'm trying to do you a favor; please don't yell at me."

Her: "Control your kids, don't control me! Now move your car!"

Me: "I'm not controlling anyone, I'm just asking you to be polite."

Her: "You don't have any right to talk to me like that! NOW MOVE YOUR CAR!"

I back out as promised, wait til she gets in, then pull back into the spot. She apparently feels this is still blocking her in.

Her: "*yelling something at me through her closed window and my closed window*"

I leaned over to say 'what?!?' and she yelled "MOVE YOUR CAR!!! MOVE! YOUR! CAR!!!" again. I just backed back out, let her pull out, and pulled back in.

I'm not a confrontational guy in the slightest, so this whole exchange took me way by surprise. Even thinking about it later I can't think of anything I could have said that would not have made me feel worse, with the possible exception of 'Look, I'm trying to do something nice for you; if you're going to be nasty about it, forget it." and just gone inside.

Poll question: Unpleasant school parking lot incident

Poll result (33 votes) If she parked crappily, it's her responsibility (25 votes) Vote You were kind of a dick for parking her in, really (0 votes) Vote Not a big deal, until she brought your kids into it (1 votes) Vote don't go out of your way to be nice to people (0 votes) Vote she was outta line (5 votes) Vote you're a total chump (2 votes) Vote