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?

Both things are true. Poor reading comprehension and way too much poorly conveyed superfluous detail.

🤢

I think you wouldn't be getting such a hard time if you hadn't mentioned your job. There is a strong tendency towards on here towards thinking that women who have this kind of stressful job are pretentious, up themselves, not as competent as they think they are, have ideas above their station, etc. Be thankful you didn't dare to say you thought you were good at your job, or you'd have really had a pile on.

Fgs not every man that speaks or ask us something wants to chat us up.

'Consider he may have psychological issues and not understand boundaries'

This is dangerous advice to a woman dealing with men.

Its not our job to educate/make adaptations for random men who might have problems understanding boundaries, but are in reality all too aware of what they are doing.

And I would suggest that men who have psychological issues such that they can't understand boundaries are the very men that women need to stay the hell away from.

Please don't be so naive.

We are not their mums. We don't owe every male waif and stray support, friendliness and looking after.

Why can't men notice these poor individuals and chat to them? Why is it exclusively women's job?

Edit to add: none of those questions you've listed makes a difference to a woman's right to say no to unwanted attention.

Not so boring I'm going to spend time trying to decipher that

Hardly, but in terms of personal safety the OP might want to be more aware of her surroundings.

He was rude.

Nope. I’m C suite. Don’t make this about internal misogyny when we’ve got plenty of the traditional stuff to criticise.

Ha ha, yes you're right!

See my earlier response on the thread about both OP and the man she spoke to assessing the situation wrongly, but OP made it ok in the end.
It's a bit messy being a person!

Behaving badly is approaching someone who has headphones on and is engaged in an activity.

There are going to be a lot of men very pleased that there are so many women (assuming these posters are women) who are happy to stop what they're doing, take off their headphones and engage in chat with a male stranger. Maybe you could wear a t shirt saying so and that way they can keep all their unwanted interactions to you and leave everyone else alone.

It was fucking last Thursday!! How many times 🤦‍♀️

Agree with this. He was very rude to distract you with meaningless chatter when you were so obviously busy and not looking to engage. He's an entitled nobody. I'm surprised he didn't tell you to smile or 'cheer up luv'.

She was aware, she noticed him trying to get her attention and asked him what he wanted.

If she wasn't aware, she'd not have noticed the guy at all and wouldn't have made this post.

Oh God don't you just hate 'cheer up, love'

🙄

I would consider your behaviour rude.

Oh I don’t know, there are obviously posters on here who find a cheer up luv from a strange man just brightens up their day. I mean it would be rude not to do as instructed wouldn’t it!

I can think of no good reason to approach and interrupt someone on a laptop and with headphones, unless it's to warn them of a problem or possible danger.

You apologised, did he apologise to you?

PS I would be suspicious of any stranger who was sizing up women's handbags on the tube

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

I don’t think you were unreasonable to shut down the conversation. No one is entitled to conversation from you just because you’re in public, and especially when you’re clearly working on your laptop.

However the entire tone of your OP feels like a parody post, you sound like a comedic sitcom character that overstates their self importance too much. “New finance job in the city”, “I am contractually required”, “Vintage Italian” I mean is any of this really relevant 😂

Your language is very pretentious (I also work in senior level finance by the way)

There's plenty of it on this site and I stand by it. It's all over this thread. I'm not "making it" about internalised misogyny when it's in plain view (plus lots of another flavour of internalised misogyny about being "kind" to strange men). Threads where a woman is having an issue at work become unbearable once the "I bet your manager is behaving appallingly because they don't actually rate you, you're not as good as you think" nonsense starts up.

He was incredibly rude to interrupt you when you were working & had headphones on

you don't owe random men your attention. I spent years having men interrupt me or try and get my attention and it didn't matter what I was doing. In the end after the 5th time in one day, rudeness is all you've got left!

It’s relevant because her deadline was Friday and this was happening on Thursday afternoon so she was coming up towards her deadline. It’s also a relatively new job and she’s clearly finding it intense as she used the word twice. It’s relevant context to set the scene for the interaction.

if she just said she was working at the tube station then we wouldn’t know about the additional stress.

None of us have to engage with random strangers. You could argue that he was rude for interrupting. I wouldn’t give this a second thought.

Too nice.

Or is it a coincidence and no shades of cynicism on my part that they always make a beeline for the lone female?

I would hate the situation too.

Some people dont seem to be able to read the room and judge when it ok to ask something and when its not. I dont know whether its poor upbringing or a real disability. Like they only consider their need, their curiosity but not the other person.

I had a similar happen while learning to use a manual mode on a camera. A big proper camera, I was experimenting with different settings etc, clearly focused, looking into the camera. And a woman started bothering me, she kept going on when I first didnt respond. When I told her to stop interrupting me, she said " I just wanted ... " I cant remember what it was, but it was equally stupid to your handbag situation.
My concentration and mood were gone. Annoying. Luckily not as important as your workdeadline, I can understand very well how disrupting that was.

You can roll your eyes all you want, but this is exactly the kind of thing my autistic brother would do. He is very chatty, he doesn't always understand when is appropriate to talk or to who. If he sees something nice or interesting he will 9 times out of 10 go up to that person talk to them. He doesn't know that headphones means do not approach. He gets quite sad when people are rude or mean to him and he doesn't understand why when he is saying nice things, even at the grand old age of 43.

I dont think this is fair. I actually think it is the man who was full of self-importance as he clearly thought his small-talk was more important than whatever the OP was doing. I couldn't imagine having the self-confidence to do that and anticipate a positive response.

OP, I get into deep focuss too and would have been startled/flustered by someone jerking me out of it by waving at me to remove my headphones. I wouldnt have been irritable but i would have taken a while to switch in to what was going on and would probably have come across similar to you did.

At worst, it might have made the man question in future if all women will react positively to an enforced social interaction with him - and i think that’s ok.