Imagine working in an office where you’re not provided with a place to park your car. You either have to walk to work or pay for your own parking spot. If someone in your office was taking vacation time and wouldn’t be using their parking spot, would you think it would be okay to park in their parking spot as long as they were okay with it?

The employee in this story was in this exact situation, but HR thought it was a really bad idea for them to park in the temporarily vacant parking spot.

Keep reading to see how the employee ends up getting what they want anyway.

Managers aren’t allowed to tell me to use their parking space when they’re off? Alright then.

So this happened a good 6 years ago now. I was just starting my IT career so I was a basic level 1 desktop engineer for a large financial company.

My team consisted of me, a level 2 engineer and 3 managers – one for data, one for people and one overall manager.

He had to choose between walking to work or paying to park.

Parking in town was either expensive or impossible and while management and supervisors got parking spaces in the huge multi-story next to the office, other staff members didn’t get one and either had to pay the very expensive parking fees or park far away and walk.

Being on a low entry-level salary, I opted to walk the 30 minutes into town (and often got sick due to bad weather).

The level 2 guy lived a 5 minute walk from the office and didn’t own a car.

The HR manager was completely unreasonable.

When any of the managers were off, they offered their parking space to me so that I wouldn’t have to walk which was very nice of them and greatly appreciated as it was saving me money too.

One day, I got called into HR because somebody saw me coming out of the multi-story and got jealous and asked why I get a space and they don’t.

This HR manager was INCREDIBLY condescending and talked to me like I was a literal child with lines like “Back when I was your age, I thought the world owed me everything too” which is absolutely not my attitude but sure, go off on one like you know me.

She said it wasn’t fair on the level 2 guy because he might want the space too, she wouldn’t listen when I said he didn’t drive and even said to me he didn’t want it after I asked if he was okay with me using the space.

The data manager had a suggestion.

At the end of the day I went into the management office and we were chatting about the day as we usually did and I told them about the HR meeting and said they weren’t allowed to let me use their space anymore.

The data manager then had a genius MC suggestion.

She was a very selfless soul who sacrificed much of her time to help other people and this situation rubbed her the wrong way and she wanted to do something out of spite.

She said that whenever any of them were on holiday, they’d just tell me that their parking space will be empty for the duration, NOT specifically that I can use it which is what we were told not to do from HR.

Here’s what happened when the data manager was out of the office…

So the next time they were on holiday, I parked in their space and after a few days, somebody else got jealous and taddled to HR again.

I was dragged into a meeting and asked why I was still using their space.

I said that I just took a chance on an empty space I found in the multi-story (they were rented, not pay and display).

There was nothing HR could do.

She went and asked the data manager when she was back in if she said I could use the space, to which she said “No, I just said goodbye before I went on holiday for 2 weeks”.

HR then told her I was in her space in her absence and asked her if she wanted to raise a complaint against me.

She said “No thanks, I wasn’t using it anyway”.

Their hands were tied and there was nothing they could do to prevent me from using the spaces as they’re allocated privately to the individuals for use even outside of office hours and only reclaimed when they leave.

That’s glorious! HR really needs to mind their own business sometimes.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Surely, HR has something better to do.

Another person thinks HR is trying to seem busy.

Here’s a tip for anyone who pays for parking.

We could replace Moaning Myrtle with a bully.

HR doesn’t always make the right decision.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.