Parking signs are meant to prevent confusion, but some customers can turn them into a full debate.

What happens when a well-educated shopper decides an entire customer lot must be reserved for employees?

Instead of accepting an explanation from the longtime tenant, he repeatedly argued that his reading had to be correct.

Check out how one parking sign became a battle of interpretation.

Parking

In our somewhat small parking lot (I share a building with 2 other businesses) we have a sign that says something like “Reserved parking” and something about towing.

In addition, the majority of the spots are for the hair salon and has that business name painted onto the spots themselves.

My shop has 4 spaces (though I now rent one to the massage clinic, which is the 3rd business).

My spaces used to have plexiglass plaques with the name of the business that used to be here printed on them but I pried them off since it was no longer relevant. So my spaces and the massage clinic spaces have no names on them.

She thought the parking situation was obvious.

I always thought it was pretty clear that all of the parking in front of the building was for customers of this building.

The sign obviously means that you can’t park here and wander off to other stores… though people do anyway.

Just had a guy come in… the first one to not understand the parking.

A customer comments on the parking situation.

Guy: Phew! Not much parking out there ‘eh?

Me: [looking outside and all the spots I can see are filled] Hm, I guess it is busy out today if all the spots are filled! Don’t see that much!

Guy: Oh, there are a few spots… but I didn’t want to park in them because they are reserved!

Me: [quizzical look] I’m not sure what you mean.

The man misunderstood the sign in the parking lot.

Guy: Oh, there is a sign out there that says the lot is reserved! I guess it is for employee parking, ‘eh?

Me: No, employees park in the few spaces we have out back. The sign means that this lot is reserved for customers coming into this building.

He argues with me a few times back and forth about what the sign means.

Me: Sir. I’ve been here for 4 years. It absolutely does not mean that you can’t park there if you are coming into this building. It means that you can’t park here and go off to the smoke shop or butcher or across the street or wherever. You have to be a customer of the hair salon, here or the massage clinic. The lot is reserved for our customers, but no one else.

The employee doesn’t understand why the guy was confused.

Guy: I am a well educated man. [takes the order I retrieved for him while we talked about parking and leaves muttering something I can’t hear.]

… Okay then.

He honestly thought that all 20 or so parking spots were reserved only for employees and NONE for customer? How does that even make sense?

That guy is still convinced he’s right.

I tried telling him that if it were reserved for employees that it would say “employee only parking” or something.

He still thought he was right.

I did try to placate him by saying I’d bring it up with the landlord next time I see him… but I am not going to.

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I can understand the confusion. A “customer parking only” sign or something like that would make more sense.

But the customer should’ve believe the employee since obviously an employee would know where the employee parking is located.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s a vote for changing the sign.

Another person agrees that the sign could be confusing.

Another person would also misinterpret the sign.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about customer who won’t take no for an answer when it comes to outdated price-matching policies.

But this person thinks the sign is perfectly clear.

The customer avoided several open spaces because he thought the entire lot was reserved for employees instead of customers.

Even after the shop worker explained the sign repeatedly, he announced that he was well educated and left muttering.

Twenty employee spaces and zero customer spots made perfect sense, provided nobody thought about it for more than three seconds.