Should I have called out someone who opened their door onto someone else’s car?

Posted by shiversaint@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 2 comments

In a busy supermarket car park in Worthing yesterday I was walking in after parking and saw a 50s guy quite blatantly open the door of his Mercedes SLK onto the Renault Megane next to him. It was so blatant I couldn’t help but point and say “I hope you’re going to let the owner know about that?”… Now the guy went to 100 degrees immediately and started shouting at me to mind my own f’in business, F off and do your shopping etc etc, and then started marching towards me. I told him it’s probably criminal damage if he leaves it, and he continued to swear at the top of his voice at me, and at this point people are stopping to look at what’s going on. I ask him sarcastically what is he going to do, in a public place like this? As he continues marching towards me - I’m thinking at this point the guy is fully prepared to hit me, but eventually he stops moving and says “well obviously nothing but I will remember your face” - and suddenly I’m getting real Ronnie Pickering vibes. I tell him good because I’m quite handsome, and walk off to do my shopping with him stood there staring at me, clearly blood boiling. Now, on another day, I think it probably could have escalated in an unpleasant way. I also realised that confronting people who do this is unlikely to actually get them to own up, they’re inconsiderate pieces of shit anyway. But I was left wondering whether I should have just kept my mouth shut? What would other UK redditors do? I unfortunately didn’t have the means to leave a note and both cars were gone when I came out.

2 Comments

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vientianna@reddit

I often sit in car parks a lot taking work calls. I have black tinted windows so you can’t immediately see that I’m sat there. The amount of people who have opened their car doors straight into mine over the last few years is criminal. I’d say it’s happened at least a dozen times, and that’s all just while I’ve been there. When I’ve made my presence known the reaction I get is astounding. You’d think people would just immediately apologise but they get extremely hostile and start making out that I’m the one in the wrong. Luckily the damage has almost always been negligible but surely it’s the principle - have respect for other peoples property

Only-Pangolin255@reddit

Had this happen to me today. I was sitting in my tinted car and had someone pull in next to me, and fling his door open right into mine. No attempt to do it lightly, just full blown flung it into mine. He was in an older Honda, and my car is quite a bit nicer, so I got out and asked him (not so nicely) why the hell he opened his door into mine, and that it’s fine if he doesn’t care about his own property, but don’t damage other people’s). He said to me, hilariously, “fuck you, you’re a piece of shit, I hope you die”. This is a 30ish year old man saying it to me. I’m a woman of about the same age. I’m quite tall and not intimidated easily. I re-parked so he couldn’t hit my car again on the way out of a sandwich shop, and then proceeded to go inside said sandwich shop and let him know if he ever damaged my property again and then gave me attitude I was going to beat his a**). He put his fingers inside his ears to show he wasn’t listening. Such a hopeless case of a limp wristed little b***** who doesn’t respect the property of others. I’m sure he has done it to countless other people and will continue to do it.

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