Some people think they can park wherever they want without consequence, but that mindset often comes with a price.

One stubborn mom’s refusal to move her car led to a chain of events that left her with not just a parking ticket, but a criminal record.

Read on for the full story!

“Can’t you just unload around me?”

I work in construction as the foreman for a new house build.

The location is kinda strange, the house is 250 feet up a hill via a foot path only.

All of our materials have to come up this foot path by hand, it’s a pain to manually carry, quite literally, an ENTIRE HOUSE up this hill.

At least they have a dedicated space to put all the gear.

One of our saving graces is having the two parking spots on the street at the bottom of this hill marked with official No Parking signs.

That is, until they get some competition to park in those spaces.

Unfortunately, there is an elementary school about half a block away and the parents of children seem to regularly (at least twice a day) think it’s ok to park in our spots.

The worker tries to handle it gracefully most of the time.

Now I consider myself a reasonable person, so if someone is parked in the spots and we don’t have a delivery or a need to park a truck, I will let it go.

If we need the spots and there’s someone parked there, however, I will ask them to move nicely and most of the time they do so immediately.

Until today.

The worker sets the scene for the incident.

I get a phone call from the lumber delivery truck that is en route to our location, he says he’ll be there in about two or three minutes.

I let him know I will meet him at the street and make sure he has space to park.

He’s carrying all of the material to frame the roof of our house, which is a lot of really big lumber and will take easily an hour to bring up the hill.

So naturally I didn’t want him parked in the middle of the street with his hazards on for an hour, when we have a perfectly good parking spot for him.

That’s when they notice a driver parked in the spot.

As I begin my trip down the hill, I notice there is a school parent sitting in her car idling, assuming she’s just waiting to pick up her child.

I walk up to her car and politely let her know that she is parked in a no parking zone and we really need her to clear it to park a delivery truck.

She’s not exactly polite back.

She scoffs at me and rudely states back, “I’ll just be a few minutes, and your truck isn’t here, take a chill pill dude.”

Before I can respond, a giant lumber truck comes around the corner and I wave to him, and then gesture towards him to the woman in the car who has now put her window back up to ignore me.

So he tries again.

I put on my best customer service smile and wave at her through the window, she put it down halfway and angrily shouts “WHAT!”

By now the truck has pulled up alongside her car and I politely ask her again, with a stronger tone of voice to move her vehicle, reminding her that she is illegally parked in a tow away zone.

She’s unwilling to move, so she suggests they change their plans.

Then she gives me this wonderful idea, she says, “Can’t you guys just unload around me? Jesus, it’s not that hard.”

I give her another smile and walk away, a brilliant plan forming in my head.

The driver and the worker continue to execute their brilliant plan flawlessly.

I instruct the delivery driver to park as closely to her as possible and block her in with the porta potty that is at one end of our reserved spots and the parked car that is parked just adjacent to our spots on the other end.

He smiles because he immediately gets what I’m trying to do, and proceeds to expertly block this lady and her car into a little two parking spot jail.

We unstrap the lumber and my guys begin humping material up the hill, meanwhile I call the police parking enforcement to let them know the situation.

It’s nothing against her personally – he just needs the spot clear.

At this point in time, I wasn’t trying to get her in trouble, I just wanted a record of why we were blocking part of the street so we don’t get in trouble with the city.

The very friendly traffic officer lets me know that she can be there in about 30 minutes and deal with the situation for me, wonderful!

The driver begins to feel the squeeze of the truck behind her.

As we continue to unload lumber the child of the parent shows up, and wouldn’t you know it Mom is just now realizing that the lumber truck is parked so close she can’t get out of her driver door to meet her kid.

She awkwardly clambers across the inside of her car and stumbles out the passenger door, shooting glaring looks at me and the truck driver in the process.

She begins to understand the severity of her situation.

She loads her kid into the back and then begins to realize that she has no way of leaving.

She comes storming up to myself and the driver and states, “I’m in a big hurry, you need to move your truck right now so I can go.”

The worker knows just what to say to set her off.

Before I can respond the driver gets a grin on his face and says, “Ma’am in order to unload the lumber on the truck we had to unstrap it, and per our company policy I’m not allowed to move the truck with any unsecured load on it. Sorry.”

This sends her into near aneurysm levels of blood pressure, meanwhile I can barely contain my laughter.

“Forget your policy I have somewhere to be!” She barks back at him.

The other pieces of the plan begin to fall into place.

At this point, with impeccably convenient timing the parking enforcement officer shows up and parks behind the truck.

She doesn’t see the officer arrive and while the officer is still getting out of her vehicle I just casually say, “Can’t you just pull out around it? It’s not that hard.” With the biggest grin I’ve ever had I watch as she realizes that I just used her line on her.

Here’s where she really starts to go off the rails.

“*** you!” She yells, and storms back to her car and angrily clambers back in through the passenger door and into the drivers seat.

At this point, the officer is walking up to myself and the driver, before she can even introduce herself the Mom in the car slams it into reverse and stomps on the gas, crashing into our porta potty and knocking it over, and then throws the car into drive and tries to mount the curb and drive on the sidewalk.

The observers can’t believe what they’re seeing.

The officer, driver and I are staring in disbelief as she gets halfway over the curb and gets stuck.

I can hear her screaming obscenities over the idling truck from inside her car.

The officer promptly walks up to the door of the car and orders her out.

My favorite part of the entire thing is watching her face go to shock as she realized she just did all of that in front of a police officer.

Obviously, there are consequences for this behavior.

She gets slapped in cuffs as the parking officer calls for a second unit and she is promptly sat on the very curb she tried to drive over.

She sits on the curb yelling to the now two officers about how we told her she could stay there and that we never asked her to move.

The traffic officer responds that she was the one who was originally called when she first refused to move and that she already knows what’s going on.

While myself and the driver are giving a report to the second officer, my guys finish moving the remainder of the lumber and the driver finishes his statement and takes off to go back to the yard.

She’s charged with a laundry list of wrongdoings.

By the end of the ordeal she was arrested, charged with Child Endangerment, (her kid was in the back of the car the whole time) Reckless Driving, Destruction of Property, (the porta potty) and Driving on a Suspended License.

On top of all that she also got her car towed, the kid went home with his grandma and she went to spend some quality time in a cell.

I never expected her to actually heed my advice to “Just pull out around it.”

But I think next time she’ll probably think twice about parking in a tow away zone, if she ever gets a license again.

Her stubbornness cost her a whole lot more than just a parking space.

What did Reddit think?

It’s unlikely that parents like her weren’t warned in advance that this space was off-limits.

She could have chosen to turn the situation around at any moment, but she refused.

It’s satisfying to watch someone get what they deserve.

The worker could have taken her requests extremely literally.

Let’s hope she at least drove away with a lesson in what happens when you push your luck too far.

She found herself going from a no parking zone to a jail cell.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.