This kind of stuff drives me NUTS.
I’m talking about when someone tries to act like a big shot and push you around…and they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Check out what happened when a man at a campsite tried to run his mouth…it didn’t end well for him!
Start now!
You want to be strict with the camping site rules? Then let’s be strict with the rules!
“Context: Few weeks ago I was touring Europe on my car and caravan with family. Usually people are very nice on camping sites with their temporary neighbours but this incident was a big exception to that rule.
Story: We arrived to a very large camping site in the middle of Sweden late afternoon and after getting our keys and a printout info (camp site rules and local tourist attractions etc., actually like a magazine) from the reception we went to find our designated pitch to set up the caravan so we could start relaxing after hours and hours of driving.
Now it might be relevant to see how the pitches and driveways are set up for the story to make better sense. Let’s say I’ve been assigned the spot 67 and the old geezer of this story has the pitch 58.
There’s always someone like this…
So we release the kids to go find a playground and start the process of setting up camp. I back up the caravan to the pitch, detach the car, manually crank the support legs down and so on when a grumpy old geezer approaches yelling “Four meters! Four meters!”
It was hot, I was sweating from the manual work and a bit confused so I ask perhaps a bit sharply what he is going on about?
He manages to explain that “the rules say the caravans have to be 4 meters (about 13 feet) apart and that I absolutely must move my caravan” which is already half way done setting up camp.
Now I admit that I did put my caravan only about 1 meter (little over 3 feet) from the back of the pitch but this jerk has his own caravan roughly the same distance or less from the perimeter and his front tents ground lines are ON OUR pitch.
I go around checking the situation and leave my wife to talk with the geezer. I come back around after maby 30 seconds and see my wife upset.
This guy stepped over the line.
Before I can ask why, she tells me that the geezer told her verbatim “to go back to Finland!” after she had pointed out that his tent cords are attached to our side.
So I get angry. I’m positively seething and for a moment I consider getting physical, but then I decide to get petty instead.
So I go undo the setup we’ve already done, I move the caravan, double check that I’m within the rules. This took me about 7 minutes. Then I go tell the geezer that I’ve now complied, so if you want to be strict with the rules, then let’s be strict with the rules!
Payback time.
Your own caravan is clearly in violation of the rules, so move the thing or I promise I’ll go to the reception and complain. I was so angry that I remember my hand shaking while I emphasised my message with finger pointing. So I was pretty angry.
Fallout: We got great satisfaction seeing he had to disassemble most of his front tent, crank up the support legs, get the car, attach the car, move his caravan and then re-setup everything.
Took him and his partner about 25 – 30 minutes to do so.
Words to live by…
If you want to be a jerk, make sure you are also in compliance before complaining to someone else. These kind of rules that are usually more like suggestions anyway…
Oh, and I also told the kids that there is a special situation here, you don’t have to be quiet and consider the neighbours like normally. Instead you can shout and play as loudly as you like (within the allowed times to make noise) and they did.
Luckily the other surrounding pitches were not occupied at the time so this didn’t bother anyone but the geezer and his partner.
I also got a small solace from the fact that my wife did reply to the “Go back to Finland” comment with the age old classic “**** you!”.
We left the site and continued on our way the next day as planned.”
Check out what folks had to say on Reddit.
This reader made a good point…
Another person was a fan of this story.
One individual shared their thoughts.
Another Reddit user was impressed.
And this person chimed in.
It’s good to know the rules before you open your mouth.
Words to live by!
If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.