Parking Etiquette 101

My friend Emma came to visit me last weekend. We had a delightfully girly weekend, which included going out for breakfast on Sunday at Pancakes At the Port (for the record, I had the apple Bavarian pancakes and they were divine).

As we pulled into the carpark behind the restaurant, it became apparent that parking was going to be a challenge. But then eight or so individuals - two distinct car loads - walked into the carpark. "Hurrah!" we thought. "We have a carpark now!" (The layout of the carpark means a very awkward 6,749-point turn in a ute that has the turning circle of a large cruise ship if there's no carpark to zip straight into, which I very much wanted to avoid.)

So we waited.

And we waited.

And we waited.

I'm not entirely sure what those freaks were playing at, but they took for-everrrrrrrr to walk to their respective vehicles, unlock them, open the door, get into the car, put on their seatbelts, adjust their seats and mirrors, start the ignition, put the car into reverse and back out of the carpark. Given how long they took, I thought that perhaps they may have had a quiet game of Uno or maybe done their taxes as I sat there getting madder and madder. It was all I could do not to shake my fist at them (I resorted instead of muttering all manner of rude things under my breath).

Did they not realise that I had a much larger vehicle than they did, with a bull bar on it, no less? Did they not perceive the damage that I could inflict upon their vehicle without putting so much as a scratch on mine (my vehicle has in fact been rear-ended before, which all but wrote off the rear-ender's car, but left mine completely unblemished. True story!), should I happen to get all road-ragey about it?? At this point, just so you don't think that I'm a completely unbalanced psycho, I feel I must declare the following circumstances:
1. It was 11am on a Sunday, and so rational thought was at an ebb
2. I had not yet eaten breakfast, and as such my blood sugar was low, so I was cranky
3. I had gotten up at 05:15 to pick my handsome man up from the airport, and as such was sleep deprived, so I was cranky
4. (and this is the important one) I WANTED PANCAKES NOW, DAMNIT!!!
... soooooo, as a result of these circumstances, I may have been both irritable and irrational. But only a little bit.

So I put it to you: When you see that somebody is waiting for your carpark, do you do your best to get out of there, lickety-split? (And, if you're not leaving, are you courteous enough to shake your head vigorously at the waiting vehicle to announce your intention to not surrender your carpark to them?) Or do you approach the whole leaving-the-carpark thing with about the same speed with which a glacier moves?

I sure hope it's the former!

Once the Procrastinators finally stopped piss-farting around and left the carpark, I did my civic duty and squeeeeeeeezed my car through a tiiiiiiiny, diagonal gap so the car waiting behind me could get the second carpark without doing a 4,527-point turn (it was a smaller car). The lady driving that car gave me a big grin and a wave, and I reckon the grin and wave I returned was just as big, because her acknowledgement really made my day. It felt like we had vanquished the enemy together.

Now THAT'S parking etiquette.