One Parking Complaint Backfired When Motorcycle Owners Abandoned Their Space-Saving Arrangement And Began Taking Up More Of The Lot
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Motorcycles were saving valuable parking spaces.
Then someone complained about two bikes sharing each spot.
The riders followed the rules.
Parking immediately became much worse.
Let’s check out all the details below.
Motorcycle Parking or: How They Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Bike
Parking on military bases usually isn’t that difficult to find. After all, they are built by Americans.
However, bases on mainland Japan are fairly compact, understandably so with the lack of real estate and whatnot.
Construction projects are a near constant plague that often seem to take up a significant amount of parking spots.
At the time, there had been one ongoing in our dedicated parking lot for months, taking up nearly half the spaces.
30 minutes before work started, the parking lot would be completely full, and people would have to go park down the street, a few minutes walk away.
They tried to be efficient.
Of note, a large number of people in my unit had just started riding motorcycles in the months leading up to this incident.
Being (mostly) decent human beings, we would often park two bikes to a parking spot, so that we could save the limited spaces available for other people to use.
Of 20 or so available spaces, we might on average have about 8 to 12 bikes taking up 4 to 6 spaces.
Efficient, right?
People driving cars didn’t like the motorcycles.
Well, understandably, people had been getting upset at the parking situation, and since there was nothing they could do about the construction, they would often try to find ways to “steal” parking spots.
The motorcycles in the lot were a fairly new thing, so they stood out.
As such, people would direct their annoyance at not being able to find a spot at us, and as happens when you’re feeling particularly spiteful, they would find the pettiest of things to complain about.
The rules changed.
One day, somebody of some authority announced that, per base rules, you were only allowed to have one vehicle per spot.
This clearly seemed like a way to spite those of us riding, and that it did. A lot of annoyed looks were traded, until one of the wiser individuals among us had an idea.
Since it was “illegal” for us to park two to a spot, we would stop.
So we did. But it wasn’t that simple.
This isn’t going to help the people driving cars, and that’s the whole point.
Every day, most of the motorcycle riders would come in early, early enough that the lot would be near empty.
We would park, one bike to a stall, and whereas we were originally compact and efficient, suddenly we were parking at an angle, taking up the entire spot.
Instead of 12 bikes to 6 spots, suddenly it was 12 bikes to 12 spots, and the parking lot would be full an hour before work even began.
Whoever complained about our breaking the rules suddenly found themselves parking even further down the street.
They made their point.
We continued this for about a week.
Monday came around, and we all just went back to our old ways, showing up at normal times and parking two to a spot.
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Needless to say, never heard any complaints about the motorcyclists again.
I’m glad nobody ever complained again. It sounds like complying was really effective.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
It’s really a simple math problem.
Spots for bikes would be a good idea.
Yes, complying can point out the problem.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a homeowner who doesn’t care whether or not their neighbors hate their yard flamingos, because they aren’t subject to the HOA.
A biker weighs in.
The riders obeyed the one-vehicle rule by giving every motorcycle its own full parking space.
After one miserable week, they resumed sharing spots and never heard another complaint.
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