Dear Prudence,
Parking is very tight in my city, since we have two major universities and horrible traffic. My house is three blocks away from the university where I work. I don’t have a car, and my boyfriend has a motorcycle, but he usually takes the bus to work. A colleague was complaining about the cost of parking tags and lack of space for his daughter, a student here. I told him if she wanted to park in our driveway, she could. At first it was just her Volkswagen Beetle, and we rarely saw her. Then other cars started appearing in my driveway and stayed there all day. Apparently my colleague’s daughter told all her friends my driveway was free parking! Someone in a truck sideswiped my house and ruined all the flowers I planted.
I told my colleague that his daughter was no longer welcome to park at my house. My boyfriend rolled a large potted plant into the middle of our driveway and put up a towing sign. I got an apology from the daughter, but now my colleague is upset with me because I refuse to relent on my parking ban. It is making work borderline uncomfortable for me because we have to work closely together. He is very cold to me and makes personal digs, but nothing rising to an official complaint to human resources or our supervisor. How do I handle this?
—Parking Wars