AIBU Re Train Seats

[ConnorCamden]

Last night one train, the one I normally get, didn't show. It was cancelled due to a fault. Myself and approximately 10 other people had to stand around for an hour until the next train. During this time, the platform got very very busy, as you can imagine (people waiting for the next train)

Finally the train arrives. I climb aboard and, like the 25 or so other people, tried to find a seat. I finally found a seat, but it meant politely asking an elderly gentleman to move up so that I can sit next to him. His response? "No. I was here first" I thought he was joking at first, so I smiled and waited for him to move. He said "What are you waiting for? I told you I'm not moving"

I ended up standing for the 1 hour journey.

AIBU to expect somebody to move up to make room for somebody? This was one of those 2 seats (like on a bus) and he was sitting on the seat nearest the aisle not the window.

lottiegb on many train lines the reservations are denoted by tickets. We don't all have the benefit of brand new Virgin Pendolinos. I didn't accuse you of junking reservation tickets, I said that I have seen it done more than once on crowded trains. And I have. Reservations are not always free, many types of ticket require a reservation and that is factored into the price of the ticket. The fact remans that if the woman whose seat you took, had a valid reservation which she was able to show you, then you should have let her have her seat (for which she had probably paid). You chose not to make a reservation, that is a mistake you, not she, should have to pay for. Like I said - to sit in someone else's seat is rude, selfish and terrible train manners.

OP YANBU I mentally took on a seat hogger who was perfectly happy to have a bag on a seat ona crowded bus and who didn't think to move it. Well I made a point of sitting next to them and now whenever I see them I always get the evil eyes from them and their mate has also made a sarky comment! I honestly do wonder why!
My parents were on a train when someone took their bag from the train and just chucked it on the platform. Luckily my parents were getting off at the same station but what if they weren't. They would have just been left on the train with missing luggage. The person who did this got a bit of a lecture from my dad!

The trams are just as bad. I remember one woman hissing at me because I asked told her to move her suitcase a little further inside so I could get on. She did move it but gave me dagger eyes for the next 20 minutes.

I have to sit where there's a table, I get pins and needles in my legs and feet or they go numb if I'm squashed so I need the space (I have MS). It pisses me off when people sit on the opposite side and squash me in with huge bags. Any ideas?

thetasigmamum Have you read the paragraph on which you are commenting? Its subject was the frustration caused when reservations are not shown on the train. So, you knew from the outset that no reservations were in place in the examples that followed. I also said clearly that the seat I chose was labelled 'not reserved'. That does not happen with paper tickets, so clearly the signs were electronic.

Quite how not knowing which train home I would need after a meeting, so not reserving a seat (on multiple trains), is 'lazy', is beyond me but then so is your approach as a whole. When I have made a reservation but they have not appeared on the train, I wouldn't dream of attempting to turf someone out of my 'reserved' seat, because, despite the promise made to me by the train company, the seat has not been reserved and the person sitting in it has, quite reasonably and in good faith, taken an unreserved seat.

Could I suggest that in future, rather than skimming a comment, inventing your own vaguely-related story, then launching a vituperative attack based upon this fantasy, you check facts before responding?

My original paragraph: 'Another frustration is when, quite commonly I find, the seat reservations haven't made it onto the train. I've experienced that both ways - missing out on my reserved seat but also, carefully arriving early and seeking out a seat labelled as 'not reserved', then the train filling up to standing room only, then someone coming along and saying she'd reserved my seat and being quite upset about it. I feel utterly reasonable in saying that her argument was with the train company that had failed to honour their contract with her, not with me. A moment when presence of a member of staff might have been helpful.'

lottie - you have been totally reasonable, don't worry!

AlexTasha, just had to pick you up on this phrase about the woman with crutches: 'She wasn't disabled at all, she had her legs crossed and was texting the whole time.'

So you know that do you? Somebody can't be disabled if they can cross their legs....and horror of horrors, can text?

Well, there you go. Learn something new everyday.

Ahh. That's better.

I had my first baby when I lived in Singapore - a city with a terrible reputation for khia su (literal meaning 'afraid to lose') behaviour and spent much of my pregnancy doing a long commute from town to the boondocks until the day i gave birth getting onto trains on which everyone suddenly developed narcolepsy. They'd be reding, texting, talking, then see pregnant me and fall straight asleep.

Another annoying habit is 'choping' -- reserving seats with packets of tissues. Best example was a man behind me elbowing me out the way as busy train pulled into the station, and failing to move me, 'choping the vacated seat by throwing a newspaper over me head onto the seat and swerving past me. I was 36 weeks pregnant.

However, nothing can beat the professional drinkers on Network Southeast who let their status dog shit on a busy 16.33 Beckenham bound commuter train recently.

GoEasy, when I follow the link from facebook to the seathogs website I'm getting a malware warning, it might just be my virus scanner being overcautious but you might want to check your pc out just in case.

Yep, the link from FB just infected my machine, it's just taken this long for DP to get rid of the bloody thing

Will report the post if you don't mind.

I had to take dd to GOSH, so we decided to make a day of it. We got on a later commuter train, and there were people with bags on seats everywhere. No way I was standing for an hour, with a three year old and a six year old, so I went down the carriage telling people to move their bags, so dd was in one row, DS in another DP and I also separate! The look of total terror in the business men's faces when Presented with a child to sit next to was classic! Quite swiftly we were presented with four seats together and the commuters all sat together!

I'd have said "and people say the youth have no manners" and barged past him!!

Why are everybody so scared of bags on seats. All it takes is a simple excuse me and most people move their bag.
I am lucky as my train I commute on is usually so empty that we don't have to share a seat, but the feet on seats really annoy me.
I did get on a very crowded train to Cambridge in the summer full of foreign tourists. I moved a newspaper off a seat to sit down and was given dagger looks all the way by this French women. I put it on the luggage rack next to me, you would have thought I had stolen it.

Just out of interest, why didn't you then say something like "Do you mind if I get past you then?" and sat in the window seat? On my line there would have been a bundle of commuters clambering over him to get to it!

Oh dear - just realised that there are 6 pages! Apologies if you have already answered my defunct query!

Op has not come back Cloudbase

Haven't read all 6 pages but OP you sound like a complete pushover! You should stand up for yourself more in future. I am just that you let him hog a seat and you stood for an hour.

I'm surprised nobody made a fuss - I've had people trying to insist we move kids onto laps (2 adults, 3 kids around a table) even after I explained we'd paid for and reserved 4 seats, even though the kids are all under 5.

I'm actually surprised that other people didn't join in-they generally do!

thetasigmamum If the other passenger had proof that the seat was reserved then that was all you should have needed.

I reserve my seats all the time for long journeys and if people sit in my seats then I ask them to move. I always have the proof of reservation with me.

Reservations might be free but if you don't take the advantage to use it then you can't begrudge someone who does.

MixedUpKitty

You did not pay for five seats. You paid for five people to be transferred from A to B. In anycase, surely it would have been good training for at least two (depending on ages) of your children to stand and offer seats to older people or disabled people, or pregnant women (were you ever pregnant?) or people who were obviously tired or crrying a small child or .......

Did your parents teach you that it was good manners to give up your seat to an older person? Obviously not.

carrying

Mabel _ I used to pay for my under 5s to have tickets so I could reserve them a seat. If you reserve a seat then you are entitled to that seat what ever age.

My train seat gripe still makes me cross when I think about it. Years ago I was on business in Grimsby carrying out a disciplinary hearing in a factory where they made fish fingers. I was feeling very sick, couldn't get away from the stench of fish, fainted and cut my head on a door handle, the cut was superficial but I decided to make my way home.

Got to the train station and had a 4 hour delay as there had been some chap who was suicidal and had to be talked down from jumping in front of a train. I was feeling very unwell and fainted again. When the train came I couldn't get a seat it was jammed packed. I explained to the station attendant that I had been ill and had to travel back to London and asked if I could have a seat in the empty first class carriage. By now I stank of fish and vomit and had dried blood on my head and she refused! I was only allowed in first class if I paid the supplement which was close to £100. My company had already forked out £200 for my standard ticket.

I ignored her and went in the fc carriage anyway. Her jobsworth attitude still makes me cross to this day.

Mabel - yes, manners. But everyone can reserve a seat, most people do. I also always paid for kids that were still of free-travel age, in order to get seats and avoid the nightmare of 2 kids on my lap for 3hr+ journeys. Likewise, I've paid for them and then found another mum and kids had taken them even though they were marked as reserved, and refused to move.

I wouldn't think twice about asking someone to move their bag and on the trains I get, noone else does either. To me it's no big deal, just ask as those who tend to do it are not regular train travellers and are so engrossed in their book/paper/ipod that they haven't noticed the train getting busy. If they didn't move the bag, I would have no problem picking it up off the seat and dumping it on the ground as it hasn't paid for it's seat but I have. I really can't understand people standing rather than ask.