Simply declaring something to be true doesn't automatically make it so… and if you want to use your neighbor's property as your personal parking space, you can't just tell them that you've decided it's community property. Therefore, you have the right to park there. Some people just don't take no for an answer, and it's pretty clear here that this neighbor has some serious boundary issues, both conceptually and literally, that weren't going to improve without facing some consequences. If you gi…

It's often said that you should never stoop to someone else's level and, instead, take the high road and go on to live a better life, beating them through their inability to affect you. Well, truth be told, that's not really all that much fun, and it's not very practical at times since it doesn't really solve the immediate problem at hand. And when that immediate problem at hand is your daily at-home parking situation—well, it's kind of hard to just walk away and ignore it since, you know, you…

Family is difficult, perhaps even one of the most difficult things—even when the relationships are fairly “traditional” and straightforward. Let's be honest, though: what is straightforward? Is there even really a straightforward when it comes to family? The reality is that there hardly ever is, and the ones that pretend

Parking is one of those things that is always going to cause issues when limited spots are of any concern. People just don't know how to behave rationally when scarcity of resources is at hand, and the monkey part of their brain takes over. Still, when you have your own driveway, even if it's shared, you'd sort of expect that your side of it would remain accessible to you (and you alone) without issue—unfortunately, inconsiderate neighbors mean this is not always the case. In this case, these n…

Assigned and paid for parking spaces are one of those things that will drive even the most sane and level headed among us to the brink—and we're not claiming to be even the most sane and level headed. The fierce competition that emerges for the limited parking spaces—with high costs associated—is intense driving tenants to extraordinary lengths. This exacerbated by the fact that apartment complexes with inbuilt garages never have enough spaces for each unit in the building often meaning that th…

Ahh yes… Parking disputes. A source of disputation between neighbors for as long as man has employed means of vehicular transport that needed to be stored somewhere in times of disuse. The need for storage space has long been a source of petty territorial badgering, especially when your neighbor has stored their carriage in the most convenient part of the communal space where you had been intending to store yours. The level-headed thing to do would be to park yours in the less convenient place…

The willingness of superiors to apply rules to themselves that they make for others speaks volumes to the character and quality of an organization. An undercurrent of issues surrounding fairness in leadership can give you a great indication of the toxicity of the workplace. This reaches levels of ridiculousness that can't be rationalized when it begins involving matters that aren't even specifically related to your performance or time that you spend at work and begins leaching into personal and…

One of the perks of living in a quaint neighborhood are the kind neighbors. It gives you a feeling of secuirty and safety, being surrounded by all these people who you usually at least know on a first name basis. So what happens when someone moves in and lives in their own little entitled world?

There will be plenty of times in your life when things seem completely unfair. Plenty of these times will involve incorrectly awarded parking infringements… Should this tenant have just moved their vehicle like everyone else so that the snow plow could do a clean sweep of the lot? Sure. But, by the time they had gotten out there and removed the remaining snow from around their vehicle that should have been the end of it. Just because a rule exists doesn't mean it needs to be enforced to the let…

Constant proximity to other people—without any recourse or avenues for escape—is maddening. I guarantee, if you were locked in a room, even with your favorite person in the world, it wouldn't take long (and even less time than you'd think) before you'd grow sick of the sight of them and tired of the sound of their voice, wishing their mouth would stay shut every time they breathed. Say now, that you don't even like this person. Worse yet, you have your entire life savings and livelihood investe…

In stories, when a character has done something wrong or displays a glaring personality flaw, there's generally a direct price that is played at some point in the story, usually soon thereafter. In life, there are relatively few times when the lesson or moral to the story of your wrongful actions is quite so clear. No, usually, we get away with being generally lazy, cruel, entitled, or plain old wrong for far too long before that karmic pendulum swings back in our direction… sometimes, we may e…

There's something startling about being accused of slighting someone and doing them wrong—especially when you don't even have any idea what they're talking about. Maybe it's the actual confrontation itself; maybe it's just your mind trying to make sense of it all, but usually, you're going to find yourself caught too off guard to formulate a proper response to the events that are unfolding in front of you.

What is it about perceived petty slights, such as another driver cutting us off in traffic, that drive us into such a rage? Instances that, if we chose instead not to react, would go by completely inconsequentially and unnoticed by us. Usually, the idea of face-to-face confrontation alone will cause those who would otherwise want to take issue with another's behavior to quail. But while seated in a car, that thin layer of anonymity and safety provided to us by our steel box with glass windows e…

Humans have long waged war over finite resources—like toilet paper and parking spaces—willing to come to blows over a rectangle of processed paper or a rectangle of asphalt that's marginally closer to a store entrance than that other rectangle area of asphalt at the back of the lot. Yeah, we're just kind of wired that way—monkeys feuding over territory and resources. At the first sign that we might miss out on something due to its limited availability, we're compelled by the overwhelming desire…

It's an important lesson to learn early in life that the things that aren't yours—well, they aren't—and you have not a single darn right to them. Should you choose to help yourself to those things anyway, you'll soon find there are consequences, and these only get worse as you get older. If you help yourself to a candy bar at the grocery store, you'll be in for the humiliation of your young life when your parent makes you go back and tell the cashier what you've done but when you're a fully gro…

In life, it's not worth worrying about the little things, especially when there are much bigger things to worry about… Yet, each neighborhood somehow manages to have that one neighbor who has nothing important to worry about and spends their days obsessing over petty details and perceived slights, plotting about how they're going to hold their neighbors accountable for that single blade of grass that went unmowed, or that leaf that blew over the property line that one time three summers ago.