She didn’t take the other passengers into account at all
Everyone who takes the train knows that getting from point A to point B isn’t the same as when you have your own car. Besides the fact that there’s a set route, you have to be mindful of others. Lunch with a smell that packs a punch? Your fellow passengers won’t be too pleased if you decide to eat it in a packed train.
This is one of the unwritten rules of using public transit. Just like in all other places where there are several other people around, there’s a certain behavior expected of you in the train, things that don’t necessarily go against the rules set in place by the transit company itself. When one woman decided to not follow this train etiquette, the rest of the passengers had something to say about it.
She sure did learn her lesson…
The situation
There’s lots of yelling back and forth. “If you kick her out, we’ll have an extra seat!”, someone yells from the back of the train. All eyes were on the arrogant woman who had claimed an extra seat for her purse. But it didn’t look like she was going to budge.
Instead of just moving the bag, the woman screamed back: “This is my personal space!”. The other passengers disagreed. The conductor, who had already spoken to the woman about her behavior, began to lose his patience: he was going to teach the woman a lesson.
Meet Jessica
Jessica Huit is one of many people that takes the train to work daily, just like on one particularly busy workday. She rushed to catch the train, knowing that it would be busy because it was rush hour. Jessica didn’t have a car and depended on public transit.
Once she got to the platform, it was exactly as she had expected. She had no idea that this trip would be any different from her normal daily ride. Jessica had seen it all during her rides to work and had become a pro at ignoring any distractions.
This distraction was a bit harder to ignore…
Worse than normal
The train wasn’t usually as busy as it was on this day. There were several more passengers than seats, so you had to get really lucky to even get to sit down. Jessica was used to having to stand during her rush hour travels, but the train was especially cramped that day. She could barely move her arms and was surrounded by people on all sides.
Thankfully, lots of people got out at the next stop, and Jessica was finally able to breathe. The other passengers were just as relieved but began complaining about how busy it was. Jessica noticed that quite a few of the passengers that had been sitting had also reached their destination: this might be her chance to get a seat!
It didn’t go as planned…
A seat
One of the rules most passengers know to follow is that you get one seat per person. This gives everyone an equal opportunity to travel comfortably. Once the train was a little less cramped, Jessica went on a hunt to find a seat for the rest of her hour and a half commute.
The last free seat
A young woman was seated next to the empty spot. Jessica looked around, a bit confused, but still decided to make her way over to the seat. She wondered why none of the passengers standing around had taken the seat. Then she realized that the spot wasn’t as empty as it looked.
There was a purse in the seat. This was surely the young woman’s bag. Jessica went up to the seat and spoke to the woman. She asked if she could sit there and started to sit down. Nobody was sitting there, so it was more of a rhetorical question.
Jessica had no idea what would happen next…
Antisocial
The unwritten rules we wrote about earlier, like not eating stinky food in a full cabin, aren’t always followed. Not everyone has a working moral compass or keeps others in mind. There’s a big range of people that take the train daily, from kids headed to school to senior citizens, so of course you’ll end up with a few passengers that couldn’t care less about the others in the train.
It’s not uncommon to have passengers around you making loud calls, people that put their feet up on other chairs, and others whose (loud) favorite music you’re forced to listen to. But these examples are nothing compared to what the woman in Jessica’s train did.
She had never experienced anything like this…
The woman
After thinking about it for a bit, Jessica walked up to the open seat and politely asked the woman a rhetorical question: “May I sit here?” The woman had placed her large Louis Vuitton purse in the seat next to her so nobody could sit there. She was using two seats just for herself.
The woman’s response took Jessica by surprise, but it explained why there were people standing around the spot without sitting down. It also became apparent to Jessica that this woman thought she was more important than the other passengers and wasn’t taking anyone else into account.
This of course meant her fellow passengers, who didn’t seem to agree with what she was doing.
The conflict
The owner of the bag decided to ignore Jessica completely. At first, Jessica thought the woman just hadn’t heard her. The woman had headphones in, and it made sense that her music might just have been too loud for her to hear the question. Jessica tried again, this time waving her hand in front of the woman’s face.
When the woman still didn’t look up, Jessica knew that she was being ignored. The woman acted like she hadn’t heard or seen a thing and continued to keep her eyes forward with an annoyed look on her face. Jessica didn’t know what to say and looked at the anti-social woman with confusion.
It turned out she wasn’t the only one who had issues with the woman…
The security officer
The passengers standing around the seat explained to Jessica that they had already asked if they could sit there and had also been ignored by the woman. One of the men told her, loudly enough for the woman to hear it above her music, that he had already called over the conductor.
As the train approached the next stop, the sliding doors of the cabin opened up and one of the railway’s security officers walked up to Jessica and the other passengers. He clearly knew what was going on and gave them a reassuring look. The officer passed by the group of people and stopped in front of the seat with the bag on it.
The confrontation
The officer crossed his arms and stared at the woman. He seemed to be as patient as can be. The passengers that had called for him must have given him all the details of the situation because he didn’t ask any questions. After a short while, the woman couldn’t ignore the officer’s glare and pulled out her headphones in anger.
“What?!”, she yelled. The officer didn’t even flinch at her reaction and immediately started doing what needed to be done.
The woman gets a talking to
The officer made his intentions clear by first pointing at her bag and then to the luggage rack. “And make it quick”, he added. The woman quickly looked away and started to put her headphones back in her ears, but the officer wasn’t going to be discouraged that easily.
He grabbed her purse by the strap and started to put it onto the luggage rack himself when the woman slapped his hand away. “Keep your hands off my things!” she screamed. “Stay away!” The officer was unphased and even started to smile a little bit.
“Ma’am, put your bag on the luggage rack or get off the train”, he warned her.
She wouldn’t listen
The woman clearly didn’t have any change of heart and put her arm around the bag, making it harder for the officer to move it. The officer grabbed the bag again and she yelled again. “Stay away!”, she shouted. “This is my bag, don’t touch it!”
The officer didn’t let it affect him and stayed polite. “Can we clear up this seat so someone else can sit here?”, he asked calmly. “Your bag can be placed on the luggage rack and one of these passengers can sit down.” The woman glared at him with rage.
Her answer was very strange…
No!
“No!”, she responded. “I don’t want anyone to sit here! There are more than enough other seats. Leave me alone!”. The officer took a deep breath before responding. “There are no other seats. The train is full. You’ll move your bag right now or I’ll kick you off the train.”, he said, albeit a bit less patiently than he was at first. “Then there will be two seats free.”
All eyes were on them as the confrontation continued. The passengers surrounding the woman became impatient and started yelling things at her. The train had been stopped at the same platform for a while now and the rest of the cabin started to lose their patience as well. Was the woman finally going to move her bag?
