Was I rude for dismissing a stranger who interrupted me on the platform?

[KookyLemonReader]

About a year ago I started a new job in finance in the City which has been very intense. The previous week I have been working very intensely to meet an end of week deadline. I am contractually required to be in the office at least one day a week so on Thurs I dragged myself out to the office. In the early afternoon I was at the local tube station platform waiting for the train and on my laptop deep in work mode when I noticed someone trying to get my attention in my peripheral vision. I turned away from my laptop removed my headphones and listened to the man. He was asking me where my handbag is from. I was very irritated that he interrupted me with this when I was clearly deep in concentration and replied in a cold way ‘I am working’ and went back to my business. A few seconds later I felt bad (also this man was an ethnic minority and I’m a white woman so I worried about that) turned back to him and said I’m sorry I was a bit rude what did you ask. He again asked where my bag is from. I told him the brand (vintage Italian designer). He made some random comment like oh I can’t buy that here I guess. I didn’t engage. Went back to my work. My concentration was lost and I was very annoyed by the whole exchange but also questioning myself. Was I awful or is it fair that he should not have interrupted a clearly full of focus person with a silly question?

You’re a right ray of sunshine, aren’t you.

Well I was raped at 12 by my own father, and endured years of sexual abuse in the workplace in the 80’s, which thankfully people of your generation didn’t have to put up with, but thanks, I do actually really enjoy my life now.

Typical male entitlement🤷🏼‍♀️

I have no idea if any of that is true. If it is true, I am very, very sorry that happened to you.

I very much don’t appreciate you trying to wish that on me though, as you seem to when you write the below:

Well I’m a woman in my mid 50s, and when you have had another two decades of shit behaviour from entitled men, maybe you will change your stance.

Look in my mid 30s I'd have been 'kind' and answered him but you do eventually see that men just don't view us as quite worthwhile. We just aren't important and that's the issue, we do not owe men our time or our attention. The man was rude to disturb the op, he wasn't owed politeness in return.

It’s all true.
And you have absolutely not understood my comment at all, by change your stance, I simply meant that in 20 years time you may change your stance on random men approaching women and trying to interrupt them in order to make conversation with them.
I would never, ever wish violence, sexual or otherwise, on any woman, or indeed man for that matter.

The question is not about whether the man was rude to the OP. It’s about whether the OP was rude to the man, and I think she was rude.

I see.

I agree and having tried to “be kind” before only for men to take that as justification to make sexual comments to me or assume I am interested in shagging them, I now have no issues shutting it down or ignoring them completely. Sometimes it’s the safest thing to do actually.

I still manage to be a perfectly kind person without feeling obliged to #bekind to random strange men who make me feel uncomfortable.

Interestingly, I’ve never once heard a man worrying or fretting about not being kind enough to strangers. Funny that eh? 🙄

Good!
Im glad she was!
I hope more women are rude to him, then he might learn it’s unacceptable behaviour!

I agree. But perhaps it’s worth getting back to the point of the thread now.

Your comment starts from a point of view that everyone who interrupts anyone is entitled to a polite response from that person.

I do not subscribe to that point of view.

No, it doesn’t. The OP was objectively rude though.

👏

I don't agree.

She had earphones on, not even just earbuds in. An unmistakeable signal that the person wearing them does not want to engage with anyone around them.

It's extremely rude to try to engage with anyone wearing earphones except in an emergency,

Rude people are not owed a polite response.

Not only that, but from misplaced feeling of guilt, she did engage. She wasn't rude at all. But he definitely was.

That IS the point of the thread!
And it’s immaterial whether you think she was rude or not.
If even one woman reads this thread and thinks “you know what, if some random dodgy geezer tries to talk to me when I didn’t invite it, don’t want it, it’s perfectly acceptable for me not to engage/tell him to fuck off/ walk away from him” then this thread has been more than worthwhile!
As women we are conditioned from childhood to be nice, be compliant, be polite to men, and it can result in some seriously difficult situations for women.

Tbh, for that bloke: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

It takes precisely one brain cell to see someone working and conclude that your stupid little question is more important and you should definitely interrupt them.

Fuck be kind. You only have to be civil, at best, and OP was. Brusque? Sure. Still civil? Yes.

I’m also a Londoner and when I was 22 was walking down Ladbroke Grove. There’s a pub on the corner on the west side and I saw an old bloke outside of it thrown his walking stick down in front of him so a woman walking past would pick it up and he could touch her shoulder and engage with her. The fucker then tried it with me. I didn’t break pace nor turn my head. He then literally grabbed me and shouted “but my stick! My stick!”

Slimey bastard. Stupidly, I felt really hot faced and embarrassed (that maybe I read the situation wrong. That others would think I was a cow). Now, nearly 15 years on, if it happened again I’d have loudly explained why he was a creepy fucker.

You don’t owe anyone your time, OP. He didn’t give a shit about yours. No woman would do this.

How was she rude? She apologised for her (possible) earlier rudeness and engaged with him in (unwanted) conversation about her handbag.

Women are not put on this earth to assuage the loneliness or other longings of random men when out in public. There are plenty of other men he could strike up a conversation about leather goods with.

Ugh.
It never stops, even when they get old!
But fair play to you for not indulging in his pathetic game!

She was rude for replying to him coldly.

You have to be on a wind up now.
No woman I know of would continue to defend this poor ickle man and his hurty feelings.

I am a woman. I missed the part about her apologising to him.

I'm more disturbed by the fact you were worried 'as a white woman' that the man was of an ethnic 'minority'. Disturbed and disgusted tbh. What a vile thing to say.

WAIT!!!!
Were you on a tube platform last week and insisted to a woman wearing headphones that you needed to know where she got her handbag from?!?!
Is that you creepy bloke?!?! 🤣

And yet the world still turns!