People who can't find a spot close enough to the front of the building don't try hard enough. I mean, have you tried just parking directly on the sidewalk in front of the doors? Nobody is ever there! It's always an open spot!
Believe it or not, I know the feeling. Took a vacation to Scotland like 10 years ago with the wife-to-be. Didn’t know anything shout the Fringe festival in Edinburgh and ended up there right in the middle of it with our rented car. Got used to driving on the opposite side of the road and car pretty quickly, but I was still remarkably proud of parallel parking in backwards-driving-world surrounded by street performers and tourists and doing it all on the first try. It was beautiful. We were perfectly equidistant from the surrounding cars, exactly 6 inches from the curb, in a manual transmission Jeep Renegade rental we picked up in Glasgow. To this day, it is my greatest parking achievement, without question. Still brings a tear to my eye reminiscing.
I never personally understood the amount of focus people put on a good parking space. Unless it's so bad that I have to park in an entirely different lot, I just can't be bothered to care, and I see people getting so worked up over what is usually a minute or two max of walk time difference.
Obviously, some folks don't walk so good and I'm not talking about that. It seems like the default behavior for even able-bodied drivers and it leads to fucking road rage incidents.
if you aren't used to walking places because you live in a car dependent city and thus drive everywhere, walking feels bad, so people try to minimize it.
parking lots usually lack shade so the asphalt bakes under the hot sun, making the walk feels extra bad after the nice cool car AC.
parking lots and surrounding areas here typically have the bare minimum pedestrian accommodations, so walking is extra unpleasant.
3b) gotta watch out for cars that might hit you, or are belching out smelly exhaust, or radiating heat when you're already sweating. Tolerable at best, and generally not at its best.
Basically, parking lots just suck to be in, so getting the least-sucky spot feels like a celebratory achievement.
I honestly intentionally park far away because I'm less likely to get someone parking way too close. It really annoys my wife, so I'll take an especially close spot if it's available, but I spend so little of my time in the parking lot vs whatever place I'm at that where it is doesn't matter too much.
Even when I was a fat bastard I never cared about having to walk for an extra ten seconds. Now a massive public building like a stadium or even possibly this aquarium, maybe, but these dudes fighting for front spaces in front of a grocery store are just weird.
I wouldn't* be surprised if she didn't drive. My wife has no conception of how difficult even just picking up someone can be, and demonstrate it time and again, standing on the other side of the road, or at a corner where I'll block all trafic if I stop.
Finding a sweet spot right in front of the place we wanna go would be like "well, yeah, you don't expect me to walk, do you?" for her, while I'd probably be as ecstatic as that poor guy.
We'll both be looking at something amazing, like fireworks, a magician, a street performer, a house fire, an air plane crash, a ufo has landed, or a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion .... and even though he knows full well that the thing we're looking at is so interesting that you can't look away or ignore it, he will still tell me and others around us ...
LOOK AT THAT!, JUST LOOK AT THAT, SEE???, LOOK AT IT!! .... while nudging, holding, turning people at the shoulder and pointing manically .... LOOK AT IT, LOOK, YOU SEE THAT?, LOOK!!! .... even after you acknowledge him and tell him you're looking at it ... LOOK AT IT!, YOU SEE THAT! LOOK!!!
I’m the primary driver in our household and I don’t have good parking spot luck. Meanwhile, my husband has excellent parking luck. It’s gotten kind of funny actually. Before we really recognized it, he wondered why I didn’t like going to a particular grocery store. It’s because the parking lot is terrible. “You mean you don’t just park up front?” Uh, what? How would I do that exactly when none of those spots are ever free? But on the off chance that he’s driving, there is always, always a spot close to the door. It’s gotten to the point where if we’re going somewhere where the parking is going to be difficult, he drives.