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Crowded parking lots can turn basic first-come rules into surprisingly tense negotiations.

In one gridlocked beach lot, a teenager was being used as a human parking cone.

Rather than surrender a space she had already begun entering, this driver challenged the family’s unusual reservation system.

The confrontation escalated quickly.

AITA for refusing to let a teenager hold a spot for his mom in a busy parking lot?

I live in New York City and drove to Rockaway beach today. I was driving in circles in one of the public free, lots waiting for a spot to open up.

I pulled into the beginning of the spot and realized there was a 14-year-old ish standing in the center, holding his phone to his ear and “holding the spot”.

I had already been driving around for a while, so my patience was thin, and my friend and I basically just told the kid, you can’t do that and put the car in park halfway in.

He said his mom was in the car a few behind us, and we stood our ground and said that we didn’t care.

They didn’t back down.

His mom ended up getting out of her car and coming up to us and telling us, too bad and that they had the spot.

We held our ground and said, “this is not how it works”.

A minute or two went by, we were halfway parked in the spot.

Eventually, the mom and her kid just called us freaking witches and they left.

Now, she’s wondering who was in the right.

It left me wondering who was actually in the right.

My friends and I were honestly a little shaken up because it was tense, but I feel like we were in the right, but I’m not sure. AITA?

She’s right. The mom was wrong. You can’t hold a parking spot by standing in it.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks he was right.

Another person agrees.

This person is glad they stood their ground.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a college student who decides to send his university a counter-bill after they try to get him to pay “inconvenience fees.”

The mom was in the wrong.

The driver could not see the teenager until she had entered most of the space, then refused to surrender it for his mother several cars away.

In a packed public lot with dozens of drivers circling, holding parking with a person was both unfair and potentially unsafe.

They brought a human placeholder to a first-come, first-served fight.