If You Stop & Wait for a Parking Spot on Hampton Beach, You’re a Jerk
It is sunny and 75. You and your friends or Brady Bunch family load up the SUV and get going to Hampton Beach!
It only took an hour to pack the car, get the lunches, find the sunscreen, grab the old chair, and go back to the house because you forgot the towels, so you are definitely in need of the beach and a cold red solo cup. You're just about a mile from the beach, and BOOM, all you see are red taillights. Beach traffic. Welcome to Hampton Beach in the summer. Typical.
You wait in the 45 minutes of traffic. After all, you got everyone this far. Finally, you reach the parking lot. The end is near. But that is the weird thing. You find yourself waiting another 25 minutes in the parking lot. Stopped. Not even crawling.
How? Why? That does not make any sense.
I'll tell you. Some JERK just saw someone packing up their beach stuff, and they are waiting to get into a spot. It may be another 5-10 minutes, or even 10-20 for all you know. But hey, they got a spot...
Don't do that. Stop that nonsense right now.
Listen, if you are next in line and a family two spots up verbally acknowledges they will be pulling out in 30-60 seconds, absolutely wait and get that spot. You were a lucky one, and go you. But there is absolutely no way anyone should be waiting more than a minute for a parking spot to open.
Let it go. There will be another one. And if there's not, you know the drill. Do another lap. It's just the way the cookie crumbles.
Time after time, season after season, the parking lots and the Hampton Strip are backed up for hours because people don't know the code. The way of the parking lot. The truth is, there's no written rule or law that states you are only allowed to wait for XXX amount of time. That wouldn't be law.
But there is an unwritten rule. You can't wait for a spot for more than a minute or so. That causes a whole lot more traffic than regular congestion. Hampton Beach is busy, no doubt. But some of it is user error.
Let me rephrase. A LOT of the traffic is user error.
So, try this. If you find yourself waiting for a parking spot because you think one is about to open up, start a timer. If you wait for more than a minute, drive away. If you continue to wait, I'll say it: you're a jerk.
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