Karen Kept Parking in My Driveway—So I Got Her Car Towed Twice | EntitledPeople Reddit
Hi everyone. Let me start off by saying that I’m not usually one to engage in neighborhood drama. I work long overnight shifts at a hospital, and the last thing I want is to come home in the morning and deal with petty nonsense. Unfortunately, petty nonsense decided to throw itself right into my lap in the form of one particularly entitled neighbor, who I’ll call Madison (a true Karen). Buckle up, because this became way more of a saga than I ever anticipated. I’m sharing it here because, looking back on everything, the escalation feels almost surreal. I’ve worked as a respiratory therapist at a busy hospital for almost seven years, and the schedule is brutal: twelve-hour night shifts that often stretch to thirteen or fourteen hours depending on the patient load. By the time I clock out and make the thirty-minute commute back home, the sun is usually well up, and all I want is to pull into my driveway, drag myself inside, and collapse into bed. Sleep is a precious commodity, especially given how unpredictable my work schedule can be. My home was my sanctuary—the place where I could shed the stress of the night. It’s a small, single-story house that I bought a few years ago, mostly because it was close enough to the hospital and had a driveway large enough for two cars. It’s just me, my wife, and, frequently, my elderly father. My father is an absolute gem of a man, but he’s had some mobility issues since a bad fall last year. Whenever he visits, he relies on easy access to the house so he doesn’t have to walk too far on the uneven sidewalk. The driveway is perfect for that; it’s right by the front walkway, leading directly into our living room. Given our tight finances, having a big house in this part of town wasn’t feasible. So we settled on a smaller home but with the crucial advantage of private parking. Street parking here is atrocious—seriously, I’ve had nights where I drove around for twenty minutes looking for a halfway-legal spot. On top of that, the city loves to hand out parking tickets for the tiniest infractions, so you can imagine how valuable a driveway is. Sarah works a 9 to 5, and she usually returns home just in time to avoid the worst of evening parking madness, but it’s still a relief for both of us to know we have our own guaranteed space. Before the events with Madison, I never really worried about neighbors. Sure, some people’s visitors might temporarily overlap, or folks might park near the edge of my driveway (making backing out more stressful than it needed to be), but outright parking in my driveway? That never happened. Everybody in the neighborhood has a fundamental understanding of property lines. Or so I thought. I remember the exact day the trouble started because I had just come off one of the roughest shifts in recent memory—an overloaded ICU, short staffing, multiple emergencies. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of sinking into my couch with a plate of leftover lasagna. I turned onto my street at around 7:30 a.m., yawning so wide my jaw cracked, and that’s when I noticed a strange car in my driveway. For a moment, I thought, “Is it possible I’m so tired I turned onto the wrong street?” But no, there was my house, as familiar as ever—and some beige sedan blocking my way. My first reaction was confusion, not anger. Maybe a neighbor’s guest parked there by mistake. Perhaps it was someone who misread an address and thought they were at a friend’s house. I took a deep breath and decided not to freak out. Instead, I pulled up behind the vehicle (but still on the street), wrote a polite note: “Hi! This is my private driveway. Please don’t park here. Thanks!” and left it tucked under the wiper. With that, I coaxed my overworked body out of the car, slung my bag over my shoulder, and trudged into the house. I did check if any neighbors seemed to be hosting visitors, but it was early, and everyone’s lights were off. I figured my note would do the trick. I’d seen plenty of accidental driveway-parkers in other neighborhoods who once made aware, apologized and didn’t do it again. No big deal, right? I parked on the street for that day, which was a slight pain but no real catastrophe. I assumed this was a one-off mistake. The next morning…