Congratulations, First Great Western, you dismissed a woman - and just lost a regular customer.

[Bidisha]

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bidisha/first-great-western-_b_3839118.html

What a load of long winded shite. Are you this boring and whiny in real life?

This must be a joke, right?
Surely.

If it isn't how do you get through day to day life without combusting with outrage?

I live near Bristol. I'm glad to know you are not coming back.

My mother used to use a certain phrase a lot: cutting off your nose to spite your face. If this entire article is not a joke, you might like to consider how it applies to you.

Oh, and for such a well-educated, cultured, independent, mature woman: grow a pair!

I don't think you're a very good journalist.

You wrote a really long, tangential column just so you can say that the guard didn't listen to your complaint about the noise.
when you complained, you didn't even rebutt his comment, you just looked at him.
that might be why he smirked: because he thought you were an idiot, not because you're a woman.

Where's Catlin Moran when you need her?

I didn't think sitting in soft play could get any worse. Then I skimmed read that.

Please tell me this isn't for real.

What an awful article!

ODFOD

LucyLastik - you actually got to the end?!

Dear lord, me me me me look at how important I am me me me heres a picture of me me me me

O people were talking and someone didn't take my complaint seriously

Me me me me poor little me

Oh my bloody christ.

That diatribe makes me want to strip naked at Didcot Parkway, embrace the first London train which comes through and declare my undying love for First Great Western.

That ridiculous article reads like the hilarious account of a London tornado 'clementines vomited across the floor'

Looking forward to Bidisha's forthcoming diatribe addressing Mumsnet Women being mean to her on the interweb just because she is a woman

Could you not have just written that shite on facebook and have your friends agree with you instead of over inflating a non event and making yourself look a bit silly and entitled really.

He didn't dismiss you because you are a woman, he answered your very half hearted complaint reasonably and went back to work.

Huffpo don't pay their contributors.

Sometimes you can see why.

What so called professional has to link for free on mumsnet. And the writing - my eyes. I'm guessing the op's parents were very indulgent. Or Barbara Cartland.

Yep, sorry, I really don't get this at all.

I know it's often possible to be in a real-life situation where you are absolutely certain that there was sexism in play, and to find when you recount it, other people can't see what you saw and come out with well-meaning 'but are you sure it was because you were a woman?' comments.

And I think we should all be a damn sight better at saying 'erm, yeah. I was there. I am very sure it was sexism.'

But I don't think this article communicates any of that, and it comes across as really sneery to the noisy students, despite the careful insistence that you weren't sneering. Sorry, but it does.

I once had a guard on the train tell me he wouldn't make a bloke turn his phone off 'because he's working, love' (this, while I had my laptop out and a thick pile of papers, which just might have suggested I was working too!). So I know people can be sexist.

I just think you didn't really communicate why on earth you think this was sexism and why you didn't ask them to be quiet yourself.

Damn, wish I'd read these replies before clicking the link!
Most boring thing article ever, OP should maybe reconsider her career choice. Maybe she should join the WRVS which is full of little old ladies with nothing better to do except moan.... Just a thought.

Ah, I see what it is - Bidisha's whingefest was published two days ago in The Huff Post and has received no comments. So she has posted it here, presumably in the hope of being offended all over again.

WEIRD.

Either this is a joke, or bullshit, or there is huge detail left out of the conversation with the Guard. Because at no point could I see how the guard was hideously rude, or that, in ANY way, he was rude to you because you were a woman. A ridiculously entitled 'habs educated journo'' perhaps. You give feminism a bad rap here Bidisha.

As well as getting the time from Reading to London wrong, you got the order of stations wrong. Going from Bristol to London you pass through Bath Spa, Swindon and Didcot Parkway in that order not the reverse.

Were you even on this train??

What response did you expect from posting a link here?

Not that it matters, but isn't there a slow train that does take longer between London and Reading? Or does it only feel that way when you're on your way back from meeting a load of pissed MNers?

There is, LRD, but not coming from Bristol. The slow, stopping trains are mostly Oxford to London.