Dealing with the owner of the apartment you rent can be tricky. On one hand, there are laws that are set to theoretically protect you from abuse, but on the other hand, they can be difficult to enforce, especially with the smaller things.
For instance, parkingspace0093 on Reddit has been dealing with their landlady’s girlfriend parking in the designated parking spot for the original poster (OP) and their wife.
This is causing some issues so now OP is asking the “Am I the A**hole” (AITA) subReddit about what they did.
Their question was:
“AITA for blocking someone in after they took my parking space again?”
This was what happened:
“In our apartment we’re only given one specific parking space. It’s been a challenge since both my wife and I have separate cars and finding parking on the street can be a mission sometimes.”
“Usually whichever one of us gets home first parks their car on the street so that the other can park inside since evening is when it gets full. For the past couple of months our landlady’s girlfriend has been coming over and keeps using our parking space.”
“And only ours for some reason.”
“Several times we’ve had to come knocking at our landlady’s door to move her girlfriend’s car and she’d apologize to us.”
“The girlfriend always acts like she’s doing us this huge favor when we ask her to move. We both have talked about this problem to our landlady and she promises it won’t happen again.”
“Last Friday my wife was out of town for the weekend. I came home around 10 pm. I was exhausted, just finished working a 12 hr shift and wanted to get home.”
“Guess who was parked in our spot again?”
“It was late so cars were already parked all over the street.”
“This time I said f*** it and parked right behind her. I didn’t have the energy to go knocking at her door and wait for her to move her car, sometimes they don’t even answer.”
“I wouldn’t be blocking anyone else, just her from being able to pull out. Then I went to bed. Well the following morning when I stepped out to water my grass her girlfriend came at me for making her miss her shift at work.”
“She said she was knocking on my door for a long time before because she needed to leave and couldn’t. Called me immature and petty when I simply could’ve gone to her to move her car.”
“I reminded her she shouldn’t be parking there in the first place and she left mad. My landlady again apologized and promised to make sure her girlfriend didn’t do that again, but now she’s not talking to my wife and they’re usually friendly with eachother.”
“My wife’s not happy with me that I did that. Instead of creating conflict I could’ve tried to find parking in the street or asked them to move like I usually do.”
“But this time I got fed up and don’t have the energy for it.”
“Was I an a**hole?”
To determine whether or not OP was right or wrong to do park behind and block the landlady’s GF like that, the commenters vote on the issue.
This is done in part with one of the following acronyms:
- NTA – Not the A**hole
- YTA – You’re the A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everybody Sucks Here
Now it’s one thing when there’s an unspoken agreement about parking spots, but OP was asked for some more information. OP also explained why they think they might be wrong here.
OP commented in response to another user about both topics.
“INFO – do you pay extra to have that parking spot or is it just part of the contract?” – ChainerPrime
“It’s in the lease” – parkingspace0093 (OP)
“Obvioisly NTA. You are nicer than I am. I would make sure they understood that if it happened again a tow truck would be called.”
“That is your spot and your landlady is abusing your wife’s kindness to allow her GF to park there.” – ChainerPrime
“We usually don’t like to get involved in conflicts and try to de-escalate, this was obviously not one of those times at least for me” – parkingspace0093 (OP)
With this information in hand, the rest of the board agreed that OP was NTA.
“NTA.”
“It’s clear that the landlady doesn’t give two sh**s about your spot. Do you pay for it? If so, remind your wife and landlady of such.” – gen_angry
“NTA – No explanation needed. Your wife needs to let it go.”
“Edit to add…this is part of your rent…are they going to refund part of your rent for not having access to your parking spot…hell no.”
“Also, it is a bit fishy…did the landlord maybe tell her girlfriend behind the scenes to park there as your wife is a friend and wouldn’t call a tow truck? She doesn’t park anywhere else, and your wife is mad at you? Sus.” – Mysterious-Wish8398
“Yeah it’s highly suspect that she only parks in the space of the nice friendly lady. How is OPs wife not offended by that?” – Lorelei7772
“Oh dear god NTA.”
“You pay for that parking spot as part of your rental agreement. By allowing her girlfriend to park in your spot, your landlady isn’t holding up her end of the rental agreement by providing you with parking.”
“Take a closer look at your lease, if the parking spot is specifically mentioned, then she’s in violation of her own contract.” – SnooDrawings1480
“NTA If someone continuously parked in my parking after asking them not to numerous times I would have had her towed.” – DiscoDeadhead
“NTA, they’re playing good cop bad cop and it didn’t work this time. She knows exactly what she’s doing and so does the landlady.”
“Your wife should put the family needs first, so what if the landlady is cold because of what HER gf did?! Not your fault, don’t enable sh**ty behaviour.” – Alinaoana
OP and their wife need to set a boundary with their landlady and her GF. It’s nice to be friends, but it can also make it more difficult when situations like this arise.
Will OP have to call a tow truck next time? Is it settled, and the sacrifice is OP’s wife not being as good of friends with the landlady? Who can say?
But OP was not wrong to want to go home and sleep after a long day.