Horrible incident on train

[TheAverageJoanne]

On a train to Leeds. Woman chatting on the phone, quite loud to be fair in what sounded like Spanish and a man across the aisle kept saying loudly "shut up jabbering." Not to her, just in general. He then got up waved his hands around in front of this woman's face and started saying several times "Me no speaky language" thank god he got off at the next stop which was coming up. Fair play to her she carried on with her phone call. I doubt he'd have said this if it had been a man on the phone.

Feel like I should have said something. The woman has just got off now too.

Awful behaviour from that man! I wonder if British people in Spain experience that level of rudeness?

I don't think so. I certainly never have.

He was rude and shouldn't have made the comments about her language.

She should have more manners than to have a loud phone call on a train! It's also rude and antisocial.

Both as bad as each other! He was being xenophobic and she was being rude, antisocial and inconsiderate.

Spanish people can be very rude. They 'can' elbow you out of a bus queue, they 'can' refuse to give an old lady a seat (college students 'can' laugh at you on a crowded train), they never thank you if you let their car out in to traffic (a Spanish friend said it's because we chose to do it so why should they thank us?). Your lady was being too loud which is rude but......he should have been polite when he spoke to her, 2 wrongs don't make a right. Anyway, some Spanish people can be rude as can some British.

I think you need to be careful confronting someone like this in case they turn on you.

But! Yes I think it’s good to help the person being targeted.

I have several times ‘rescued’ women being harassed by strange men by simply pretending to know them. Gives the person being harassed some support an a way of escaping their attention - and given you’re another woman, they’ll probably get what you are doing and go with it!

Sorry no. Having a loud phone call on a train is a bit rude an inconsiderate. As a man, to a woman, being xenophobic and singling someone out and shouting in their face at a stranger - much worse.

I got that once in Bulgaria in the 1990s...I was in a hotel in Dobrich having lunch. (I was a teacher, on fortnight's exchange at a language school.

A Bulgarian man did the same to me - though I wasn't on a phone: I'd just put in my order.

He stood in front of me, waved his arms, spoke gibberish. I speak a couple of Slavic languages and can understand bits and pieces of Bulgarian but cannot speak it.

I kept waiting for the hotel barman who'd taken my order to intervene. Nope.

In the end, I turned to the bigot and said "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" (He patently didn't speak English or Russian and his generation would have learned either Russian or German at school.)

He said "Ja..." so I responded "Du bist ein Dumkopf!" [I couldn't have managed much more than that.]

Thankfully, that took the wind out of sails and he left me alone.

They both sound like absolute twats. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. People that make loud calls in public do rather deserve what they get BUT I don’t condone prejudice in any form
either.

They both sound awful. I think it’s really rude to talk loudly within a closed space. It would do my head in. He sounded frustrated though was wrong to get in her face.

I mean she was rude and so was he but honestly the number of times I have fantasised about committing violence in people who talk very loudly on the phone on the train I’d find it hard to blame him.

I don't like it when people have noisy calls etc on public transport either but this guy was obviously just racist. He heard a language he didn't understand, saw a woman on her own and felt entitled to try and make her feel small and intimidated. That's all that was.

Spanish people have a word for northern Europeans - guiri. It's a slur and it's used openly. Brits don't have a monopoly on being mad or horrible, believe it or not.

I’ve travelled and lived all over the world and never experienced that.

I can’t stand racism. It’s the oldest story in the book and yet we still haven’t learnt. So depressing.

I would have been on his team until he did the ignorant 'me no speaky language' thing.

Conflicted on this he was over the top but perhaps the man only had his train journey as the part of his life where he can chill out.

Sitting opposite a loud person on the phone is not a nice place to be.

Welcome to Britain.

😂 That's hilarious. Wish I'd been there.

So his only option was to intimidate a woman on the phone? All he needed to do was move seat.

I’m white British (very pale) and a woman (I’m assuming a local) shoulder barged me in the street and coughed in my face when I was in Barcelona.

He was a rude twat but I do wish people would be more aware of the volume of their own voice when they are making phone calls in enclosed spaces where the rest of us can't help but have to listen to it. Some people really seem to think the train or a restaurant is the best place to loudly chat for 20 minutes at a time to three different people for no reason in particular, just because they are bored. It's incredibly intrusive on the rest of us.

And as for the ones who have all their conversations with their phone on loudspeaker, or play music or videos out loud, I'd hang 'em.

Don't be ridiculous, speaking on the phone on the train is nowhere near as bad as being a xenophobic twat.

She should have told him to fuck off you racist.

Come on, unpleasant as it was, it was one rude, xenophobic arsehole. I'm sure there are people in other countries who are arseholes too. The Spanish people who called Lewis Hamilton a monkey weren't all that pleasant, were they? It's an indictment on those particilar individuals.

Yes! All nationalities have their awful people, it's mainly on MN where only Britons are considered to be rude, those of us who have lived all over the world know that not to be true.