Called a c*nt by fellow train passenger - AIBU

Whilst I wouldn’t call someone a cunt or insult them, and he was absolutely wrong and disgusting to do that…I regularly get the train (often with heavy luggage) and I frequently become silently annoyed by others who seem to go out of their way to get in your way or disrupt the peace when you’re trying to relax or concentrate.

I am NOT saying you and your toddler did this or did anything intentionally, but I can understand someone with a bike having a short fuse and not being in the mood to deal with others.

He shouldn’t have muttered anything under his breath BUT you also shouldn’t have expected him to engage with you when apologised and you certainly shouldn’t have followed him out and confronted him.

Obviously he absolutely should not have responded in the way he did to you.

A couple of lessons here.
The toddler must be kept away from the buttons, and it is essential to ensure their safe exit from the train with minimal inconvenience to others. Pressing the button presents a serious safety hazard. To yourself, your child and others.

The other passenger did not want to engage. It's best to leave the drama and not escalate by following a stranger to make a point. He had already decided to de-escalate by removing himself from the situation, but you didn't. You followed him and carried on, and then your husband joined in. All this because of your toddler.😂

Seriously, why go back and continue the dispute? What did you think would happen?

He didn’t pick on anyone. He was an irritable, overreacting jerk but he repeatedly tried to move on and end the interaction.

They were mutually irritated with each other in the train so he went quiet and tried not to engage when she was trying to get him to respond to her half-apology, then walked away without saying anything.

She came up to him again and started back up, telling him she was rude. He reacted angrily and called her a name then got on his bike and started pedaling away. She screamed the word back at him.

Then DH gets involved and goes after him. The guy again tries to de-escalate.

The guy was arse, but he wasn’t the aggressor in any of this.

Well yes, there are lots of men out there who wouldn’t think twice about being abusive to a woman..many examples of that on Mumsnet.

But lots of these types of men particularly aim their frustration at women, because they know realistically that they won’t get punched in the face.

If they did it to a bloke , they run a 50/50 chance of it ending violently. So they go for women..

He had a bicycle. Tells you all you need to know.

Relax, and chalk it up to experience.

But you never can tell who will. So best to avoid confrontation all round IMO.

Your apology should have been unqualified IMO - you probably should have said, sorry and left it at that. He would have accepted and that would have been that. I think your apology was a little bit irritating when you stated nothing happened to the doors and that your child was only a toddler. You should have just said sorry without the rest of it. I think that might have prevented him acknowledging your apology, and that perhaps he might have acknowledged it if you'd just said sorry.

Secondly, the fact that you accosted him 30 seconds later for being rude was really reckless - you need to look after your kids, not try and parent some random into being more polite, after he's been stressed and irritated by your child pressing the close button. He "only" called you names, but you never know what people will do. Why were you so confident that he wouldn't hit you?

Maybe I’m being old fashioned here, but I wouldn’t ever call a woman a c#unt, particularly in public and especially in front of children..

Even if a random woman had a go at me…

See how he switched when your DH arrived? That's cos he's a coward and can only pick on a toddler and their mum. What an absolute AH.

I'm glad you confronted his behaviour because your DH then stepped in.

I truly believe you reap what you sow, karma looks like someone bigger than him and its coming for him.

I hope your DCs were OK.

@TheRussiansAreComing course you would. Not like there are CCTV cameras in a station car park and then you would be arrested and prosecuted for assault. I always banned my husband from sorting out very heated situations on the basis I didn't want him to be sitting in prison.

The OP is the one who apologised, so you should ask her why she did that when she obviously didn't mean it anyway...

😂

Everyone knows that you can't close the doors with the button, so there's no way he would have been mad about that.

I could be wrong, but I'm imagining you doing some leisurely performance parenting to your toddler about the buttons instead of vacating the train and letting him get off with his cumbersome bike.

Then the whole thing just escalated. He was the definitely the biggest arsehole though and like PP have said, probably knows that his behaviour was ridiculous and aggressive.

They are definitely low and accessible for a toddler in London. What are you on about?

And people, genuinely, why are some of you saying that it's ok and not rude that he ignored me the first time? Isn't ignoring someone who is talking to you totally rude?

Yeah, but you shrug, think 'whatever' and get on with your day.
No end to be a twat and bring the issue up again when the guy will have forgotten about it and got on with his day.

If you were my DW I would have knocked the cunt out. He didn’t need to speak to you like that. You had a toddler messing about. No big deal. Let’s hope he has some bad misfortune…… or at least a puncture.

Well she hadn't actually got anything to apologise for the first time. The child pressed a button and nothing happened, why would that need an apology? You'd need to be a seriously intolerant person to be annoyed about such a non event.

And yet you're still here trying to convince us as well as yourself that it was all his fault, when you expected him to change his mind between the two encounters!
And I have to agree with others that you shouldn't have even apologised in the 1st place because you didn't actually mean it and then you escalated it with the just a toddler comment.

If you caught me on a stressful day I might have told you straight just don't speak to me at all, glared at you and walked away. Similar to him.
I definitely wouldn't have shouted the c word at you with the kids though.

Commuter trains and toddlers are not an ideal mix, it can’t be helped of course but there’s nothing worse than the peace and sanctity of a commute being ruined by loud voices, music and I’m afraid, misbehaving toddlers (also people you vaguely know trying to talk to you!). Had yours, by any chance, already given him reason to be a bit cross? Was the button incident just the tip of the iceberg?

Also “he’s just a toddler” is such an infuriating response. It may be perfectly true but the last time someone said it to me was after they’d spent hours on a flight screaming and kicking my chair. Whilst there are lots of allowances that should be made, sometimes it’s also just a crap excuse for not taking charge of your child. It does not sound like it was the case here but he didn’t sound like a child tolerant chap and ironically you seemed to have inadvertently pressed all of his buttons.

I'm very tolerant of toddlers but having been hit twice by luggage I honestly think there should be a limit to how much you can take on a train. Both times I've been hit with luggage the luggage area was full so cases just left blocking the aisle, train slows suddenly and one of the cases flew across and hit me. I have osteoporosis and the irony is the priority seats are right by the luggage so I'm now thinking is the advantage of the priority seating worth it if it comes with flying cases.

OP I'd be annoyed, no reason to speak to you like that but probably not worth engaging with people like that.

@Fancycheese

I said missing my stop would be a serious inconvenience.

It would.

I am severely disabled and use a wheelchair. I have an adapted car. I need assistance to get on and off the train.

On occasion they've re-platformed a train for me because the lift was out and otherwise they'd have to carry me and my bloody heavy wheelchair over the bridge.

Not everyone is able bodied.

Yes it’s ok and No he’s not particularly rude.

He’s on his commute. Your kid irritated him (neither one of you is wrong at this point). You commented, he (probably) eye rolled, nodded, ignored you. He was rude but you took offence and made it an issue.

His language thereafter what cuntish (😉) but you created the drama.

A mistake to engage in such hostilities with random strange man especially when you have ''toddler'' and another child with you.

So one day I stopped a guy beating up his girlfriend. He ran after me…..long story short

he carried with him a huge knife that he then stabbed two boys with….i was carrying my baby at the time

you’ll never know what some people will do

so be very careful