Sideswipe: May 15: When it comes to parking, which has precedence?

"Which has precedence, the dotted yellow no stopping-marked space or the continuous solid white lined-marked parking space?" Asks Earle Mead.

What makes you feel masculine?

1. "I once MacGyver-ed open a giant jar of pickles by using a leather belt. It was a very manly-man moment."

2. "Cutting firewood, followed by lighting a fire and sitting down with a glass of bourbon (neat)."

3. "Carrying my sister's kids (two nephews and a niece) around. They always ask me to pick them up whenever I see them, so I started lifting weights a couple years ago just so that I could continue doing it as they got bigger. It worked out as I intended, I got a lot stronger and now the boys are 9 years old and I can still carry one of them under each arm. They love it since their mother can't pick them up anymore, and their happiness makes me feel good too."

The worst things about working in retail

1. "When I'm walking through the store and I say hello to a customer and they quickly turn around and pretend they didn't hear me. I guess having common courtesy is difficult for some people."

2. "I worked at a garden centre and I had a customer try to return a tree that had been dead for five years. She had bought from the gardening store that the company I worked for had taken over (in other words, it wasn't even our tree)."

3. Trying to return obviously worn items as "unworn" — don't take the mickey, it's not a clothing library where you swap something you've had enough of.

See, you can have it both ways