My Hero! Their Petty Revenge on Lounge Chair Hogs

• Like they can set up shop days before and expect everyone to tip toe around them because they left a piece of cloth. My most recent experience is Red Rocks Amphitheater. Just leave a blanket and take up row after row and just leave to go get drinks and use the bathroom. Are you insane please explain how your flannel piece of cloth holds your spot in a GA environment. — Weird_Library_3747
• (In response to above) Some spilled sugary drink on it works good. Attracts ants like crazy. I am always willing to watch the aftermath. Yes I am petty. — RevolutionaryDiet686
• I stay at reorts often for business and most have signs at the pool that if your seat is unattended for 30 minutes your stuff can be moved.
  Good for you forcing the lazy management to finally make reasonable rules —  Successful_Moment_91
• My parents have a time share at a resort. 15 minutes. That’s the window before the chairs are free game.
  Totally got into a p**sing match with an old couple because we moved vacant loungers into an open space next to them.
  “They were going to use it later.”
  They weren’t even saving chairs. They were trying to save open space.
  We didn’t move. — Rabid_Dingo
• My husband was head of outside maintenance at a condo resort & a certified pool operator. There would be owners who would “ reserve” the tables with umbrellas as soon as he opened the pool. They were told not to.
  He was instructed to remove those towels & turn into the lost & found. He did the several times a day for 20 years. We have lots of beach towels at home bc no one ever picked them up after 30 days. — Imaginary-Yak-6487
• I feel like if no one reserved seats, there would actually be enough for everyone. Instead of everyone trying to reserve a chair for 9 hours, if no one did that and just used chairs for the 3-5 hours they actually occupied one, there would be more than enough to go around. — Prostatepam
• Not that I condone it, but when I was in Fuerteventura about 25 years ago, someone went down to the pool at sparrowfart, took the towels off of the “reserved” loungers, and slung them in the pool.
  Of course, the earlybirds came down, saw no towels on the loungers, (“Huh – there’s a load in the pool though!”) and occupied them. The erstwhile “reservers” eventually made an appearance after a late fruhstuck, and went absolutely f**king mental, accusing the people on the loungers of throwing the towels in the pool and violating some sacrosanct lounger etiquette that seems to exist only in the Teutonic mind.
  It was resolved without coming to blows, but for a while, the lounger occupiers looked very much like the residents of Stalingrad. Minus the freezing and starvation of course. — Cow_Launcher
• “Prove it was your towel”
  Boom. Problem solved. — theunquenchedservant
• Canadian here with a Cancun pro-tip from my one and only visit: look vaguely sad about not being able to find a place to sit.
  Staff approach, you express mild disappointment. Then dude beckons you to follow … arrive at perfect seats, let him pick up the hat and paperback book from the towels on said seats. Thank him profusely, tip the dude, then casually ask what will happen to the book and hat.
  When he winks at you and says, “no problem, it’s my book” sit back, enjoy the chairs and admire the hustle. — HarpySeagull
• Every resort I’ve been too had a reservation policy you could use which was basically a sign that read reserved with a number that corresponded with your room key and room number, periodically someone on staff would go around and ask for your room key and name and scan it, if it didn’t match you were booted, also could only reserve for a few hours at a time. — Calbear86
• There was a guy on our cruise who would put a newspaper, still on the plastic sleeve (like he brought it from home) on the chair in the morning and spend maybe 30 minutes on it mid day then leave it there for the rest of the day. Chairs were in short supply so on the third day I threw his paper in the garbage. He came at his usual time and his chair had been taken. It was so funny to see him looking all over the place for that paper and stomp off. — wandahickey
• We used to go to the beach for a week every summer… one day, the pool area was empty, but every chair had towels on them. My sibs and I collected them and put them all on one set of chairs. It was chaos… 😆 — Maximum-Dealer-6208
• Meanwhile I’m the super anxious guy at the resort, looking at other groups thinking “Guys we have 7 chairs, we can consolidate to 4 and give those people 3. And if we move over a little that family will have better access to the splash pad.” — mostlybadopinions
• It got so bad in Tenerife, I took the maintenance guy to the side who policed the 8am breakout for the loungers and greased his palm with 50 euros .. every morning when the glass doors opened he had his foot on the best two deckchairs by the kids pool . Worked a charm and had ten remaining days of prime location . Also got a thumbs up a few times a day when he walked past. — Traditional_Tank5140
• I live in Aruba and watch this insanity go on all winter. People get up at 4am to put towels on chairs and stand in line to reserve a palapa.
  What they don’t realize is that under the law, the beach is public property and once a palapa is put in the ground it too becomes public property. Anyone can sit under it and they can not remove you. — hdroadking
• OK, so one time on a cruise, my husband and I went out to sit by the pool. After about an hour, I went to the bathroom and he went to get drinks at the bar. We had left our shirts, books and towels on the chair. When we came back, maybe after ten minutes, two teens had moved our stuff to the floor and took our seats. We asked them very nicely to move. They insisted that they had been there for hours and we were mistaken. BUT they couldn’t explain how our stuff ended up under those same chairs. We quietly told them to move, or we would dump them off of the chairs ourselves. They moved. — mikeyblueeyes20
• Meanwhile, in Balboa Park (in Los Angeles), people put chairs in parking spaces in order to “reserve” them, and elsewhere in the city, they put parking cones next to curbs to prevent people from parking.
  Same idea.
  Yes, parking in LA is a major pain in the ass. I speak from experience. But COME ON, people… — stevesobol
• (In response to above) This is oddly accepted as normal in Pittsburgh, and you’d be considered the rude one for not following parking chair etiquette (or at least was, I’m not sure about if people still do it). — KernelMeowingtons
• (Also in response to above) That’s seen as normal in boston, under specific circumstances — only after snowstorms — because if you were the one to shovel out a parking space, you deserve to claim it until you can park your car in it — AlexeiMarie (Note from Sharon: Absolutely normal in Staten Island, NY as well)
• Royal Caribbean cruise had a bunch of little hoodies for chaise lounges saying “no reserved chairs–belongings will be removed to lost and found after 15 minutes”. — NotFallacyBuffet
• Honestly, the best policy I’ve ever come across was at a hotel I stayed at in Cyprus. The hotel did the lounge chair assignments every morning – two per room, and they rotated the ‘best’ spots. No reserving them with towels, you literally had to go to the concierge desk and ask which two chairs were yours for the day. You might end up on the beach, or right next to the pool, or squished in next to a rock or the toilets. But you can’t complain because you’ll have different chairs tomorrow. Such a good policy! — MarmitePrinter

What encounters have you had with saving lounge chairs?