Commit a parking offense, and you might find out you have a shopping car zip-tied to your door the hard way.
Parking P****s of the Midwest, a popular Facebook page dedicated to documenting and shaming bad parkers, posted up a user-submitted photo that’s got their fans divided. A Lexus blatantly took up two whole parking spaces in a parking lot in Chicago and, in retaliation, another driver doled out vigilante justice and zip-tied a whole Lowes shopping cart to the Lexus’s passenger door.
Check out their post below.
The caption reads,
“From our follower-Saw a woman today at the Lowe’s Parking Lot on Ashland in Chicago with her Lexus straddled between 2 spaces and saw that someone had zip tided a cart to her car handle. Thanks P for the submission.”
As mentioned, the incident happened in Chicago, IL at a Lowes Parking lot off Ashland, right across from Ulta Beauty (exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As OP’s photo and the bird’s eye-view of the parking lot (linked above) shows, this particular shopping area is located in a busy part of Chicago.
Zoom out, and you’ll see parking is at a premium.
This is important context in my opinion and might explain why parking spaces are so vigilantly defended.
It’s no accident taking up two spaces, you actively have to decide to inconvenience another potential parker and take up more than your fair share.
Greedy parkers do this to have more spaces on either side and to avoid any door dings from neighboring parkers.
While probably illegal on the street and other public parking, private parking is a different story.
It might not be against any municipal code, but you do open yourself up to getting towed.
Getting parking guidelines enforced on private property can take as little as a few minutes to not being addressed at all.
The target of this vigilante justice might be lucky and spot the shopping cart before they drive off, or they might find out the hard way when they pull away and find a cart banging against their door.
Whereas greedy parkers could once get away with their rude parking habits, it seems social media’s accelerated these types of vigilante justice, like someone zip-tieing a shopping cart to someone’s door.
In 2022, an alleged bad parker in Ararat, VIC in Australia found a cart zip-tied to her door, a lot like our example.
This TikToker somewhere in Texas filmed himself earlier this year in August, zip-tieing a cart to a double-parking Toyota RAV-4.
@justinellis817 #foryou #fyp #punkbitch ♬ Boyz-N-The-Hood – Remix – Eazy-E
And a similar act of revenge took place in September with this lady in her bright Pink SUV parked at a Walmart also getting a shopping cart zip-tied to her door. She claims they did this because of her skin color, but others have pointed out how bad her parking job was.
@mydysfunctionalfamily1 ♬ original sound – MY Dysfunctional Family
While zip-tieing a shopping cart to someone’s door might seem like the right thing to do, the zip-tier does open themselves up to being responsible for vandalism if they cause damage to the other person’s car.
In Illinois, vandalism is punishable by fines and/or jail time, not to mention the judge ordering you to make sure the victim is brought whole, which, when it comes to car panel damage (or more) can cost in the thousands.
Something to keep in mind if you decide to exact revenge.
