SO, is chivalry dead?
I’ve grown up to always give my seat up for the eldery, the disabled and the pregnant. I’m in so much better condition, although not the best, but it wouldn’t hurt me to do so. To me, that was manners and respect.
According to a Redditer, Tiredthriwaway55654 experienced the rude behavior first hand. The 30-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant has decided to consult the AITA subreddit after a recent encounter with another rude rider.
“When she got on a busy bus, she felt lucky enough to see there was one empty seat. But here comes the twist: a guy in business attire claimed it was taken. You know, by his hand. As you probably can guess, his attitude didn’t go well either”
Here is her whole dilemma described by her….
“Pretty sure I was an a*hole here but we’ll see.
So, I, f30, am 8 months pregnant. I take public transport to work daily. I’m always exhausted cause I have to work extra time to be able to afford basic necessities. I take the bus to work everyday and often times it’s packed, but I get lucky enough when decent folks volunteer their seats for me. Now I should mention that I Don use my pregnancy as an excuse to get what I want but people just offer me their places by themselves whichs kind and sweet.
Wednesday, I get on the bus like usual but this time there’s one empty seat, I go to sit but i find a guy in his business attire sitting there with his hand on the empty seat (sort of like resting it?) I say excuse me and ask him to remove his hand so I could sit, but he tells me the seat was “taken”. I ask by who and he says his hand. Ngl….I laughed a little but wasn’t feeling well so I ask him to remove it so I could sit but he refuses again, folks start staring I tell him I’m tired and needed to sit and he replies saying my pregnancy isn’t his problem. I had enough at this point, my legs were burning and my back was hurting, so I go ahead and sit on his hand. He freaks out and tries to removes it quickly while shouting at me. He then starts arguing about how disrespectful i was to do this inappropriate thing and in public no less, I argue back ngl but then he gets off after saying I was being inappropriate and disrespectful. Everyone stares at me and I just sit there feeling a bit of shame about what happened.
I tell my husband about this incident and he wtf’d the entire time, then says that I did indeed act inappropriately and shouldn’t have made this guy uncomfortable by sitting on his hand like that. He tells me I fucked up and this was totally inappropriate despite me saying I was so tired of standing and was in desperate need to sit down.
AITA?
ETA several points- like I said I do get offered seats from others so I’m being treated well most of the time, but unfortunately run into some people who don’t do that. This guys seemed to be upset about something and then the argument probably made it worse. I could’ve de-escalated by maybe talking to the driver? How ever, I’m pretty sure he didn’t pay for the seat just to put his hand on it (who does that?). Also, most of the passengers were younger folks that day. I normally I would get a seat from older folks.”
