If you park like this you should be jailed

If you’re joining the race to find a carpark at a shopping centre this weekend, don’t be these guys, writes Jill Poulsen.

Parking is not my forte.

My friends, instigated by my boyfriend, once started a secret Facebook group documenting all of my embarrassing on-street parks.

So it may come as some surprise, especially to them, that I feel the burning desire to write this week’s column about inconsiderate parking behaviour.

Shopping centre carparks are a frustrating place at the best of times but when you add the festive period and the billion extra Toyota Klugers trying to do their Xmas shopping frustration makes way for feelings of defeat.

Here are some of my biggest bugbears.

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Stopping too early

This is one of my biggest bug bears.

If a ninety year old man has a trolley full of shopping he needs to get in his boot before he leaves be realistic about how long that will take.

If you stop too early and there will be a huge line of cars stuck behind you and your selfish ways.

Similarly if you’ve only seen a park once you’ve gone past it, it’s not for you.

Sure, life would have been bliss if only you’d seen it sooner but you didn’t.

Accept that it wasn’t meant to be and keep looking for the park that is right for you.

Reverse parking

Personally I’m not a reverse parker — as I previously mentioned my parking skills are limited — but I can understand the benefit of someone wanting to reverse into a park.

What I can’t understand is if you hold up a queue of cars because it takes you 569 times until you get it right.

If you can’t reverse in on one go, get out.

Taking up two spaces

You’re actually a bad person.

If you have ever parked in the middle of two parks you should be incarcerated.

Probably in solitary confinement because I imagine the other prisoners would take a particularly dim view of the kind of person who thinks their needs and paintwork are far more important than anyone else’s.

Hopefully the person who parked like this at the Oasis car park on the Gold Coast is now doing hard time.

The sitting duck

Using a pedestrian to hold you a space and do your dirty work is lower than a snake’s belly in my book.

The amount of people I’ve nearly skittled because I didn’t see them standing in a park is ridiculous.

And you can’t even be mad at the pedestrian, you know they are doing someone else’s bidding and you’d have to be pretty cold-hearted to not take pity when you see the ashamed look on their face.

Stalking people for a park is OK up to a point, but if you start as they get off the escalators, it’s too much.

Dilly dallying once you’re back in the car

Once you get into your car it’s important that you remain aware of your surroundings.

I know it might seem like the perfect time to get your car manual out and finally work out how to connect your phone to Bluetooth or maybe you notice that you are looking really cute and should just take a quick Snapchat, but it’s not.

Get in your car, seatbelt on, and keep it moving.

Stalking people

Stalking someone in your car to see if they are going to leave and free up a park is fine, to a point.

But if you’ve started it as soon as they got off the escalators you absolutely need to wind the window down and have a chat about what your intentions are.

A simple, “hey, are you leaving? Do you mind if I follow you?” is all that is required.

It’s very unsettling for people feel like an ASIO agent is driving around behind them in a shopping centre.

I don’t have room here to document every single shopping centre carpark don’t but I think if we could get rid of the above it would be a very merry Christmas indeed.

Jill Poulsen is a Courier-Mail columnist.

@jill_poulsen