to enjoy winding up people who think their bag needs a seat

[motheroftwoboys]

I usually wimp out of asking people to move so I can sit down but yesterday and today have, with a smile, asked to sit down. You would think I was asking the earth. Young woman yesterday, sitting on the aisle seat on a busy bus with very small handbag on seat. She sighed dramatically and made a big play of making me sit at the window instead of moving across herself. I got off before her and she actually tutted when I politedly said excuse me. I said thank you in over loud and friendly way and I was still chuckling when I got off the bus. This morning there was a bloke who thought his paper needed a seat when he was reading it. Same tactic. Same response. Wonder what my journey home will bring. [wing]

Moomins - had he put his bag/person down on the seat next to him, though?

Wahahahaha! Yes. He had put his old bag person on the aisle seat!

Ynbu opand good for you.

I get a certain enjoyment from doing this as well as kicking people out of the seats i have chosen online in the cinema orjust in general when you choose your seat when you pay and kick people out.

My friend and i enjoy observing thw cinema seat battlea too. Thwy are sometimes more entertaining than thw trailers.

I personally prefer the window seat but I think preferring and staying in an aisle seat is fair enough. I have a friend who was a bit emetophobic and she always took the aisle seat at the cinema otherwise she would just worrybshe was going to be sick and trapped. However, I think if you want the aisle seat you should stand if you can to let someone into the window, not just do a half hearted twist of your knees. That is annoying.

I have the same rule with my kids about sitting on my lap if tube is busy but when dd was going through terrible twos she used to scream and writhe when I made her move. Her seat used to stay unappealing and unoccupied!

All these aisle sitters - I don't mind that, but please do STAND UP to let me on. I am disabled (it's an invisible disability) and it causes me terrible pain if I have to squish past you, even if you've tried to move your legs out of the way. Actually just getting into the window seat will hurt a little but I understand you have picked that seat for a reason.

I'm an aisle-hogger. Also fat. Claustrophobia = aisle preference. Fatness = more room hanging over the edge of the seat than if squished against window where I will inevitably take up more than half the seat and arouse the ire of the fat-haters.

Expat the lovely lothian buses. I have to use them were i live and god sometimes they are dire.

I usually sit at the window seat but one time a larger person came and sat beside me, actualy that's not true they sat ON me. I had to ask them to move as they were crushing my leg. Not to mention they were rather whiffy as well. I got a mouthful of abuse from them about being entitled to a seat, yeah a seat, not my lap !

Another thing I can't stand is the people who put there dogs on seats, rediculous.

YANBU and of course there's always the lovely knees akimbo position beloved of certain young men. I do them a lovely little knee snuggle in retaliation - that soon sorts them out.

Expat .. just read your post at 17.14.

My DFather once told me he was on a crowded bus when a young woman yelled out 'Has anyone lost a hand? It is only that I have found one on my bum'.

Apparently at the next stop, a man got off VERY hurriedly.

Good for you. I do the same.

Stupid, selfish pricks.

News alert: the new pope, Francis I, likes travelling by bus! By all accounts, he's a kindly, modest man, so I imagine he'll be bending amild glance of rebuke on these squatting bags, and shaming them!

Something to look forward to

Oh dear, imagine trying to sit next to him. Robes everywhere, bloody seat hogger.

I had no idea about train/bus etiquette as I don't often use public transport.

I wonder how my once vomiting into my handbag on a packed train as I couldn't get out of my seat to get to the toilet would rate on the heirarchy of rudeness ? I did leave it on my lap though .

Have no problem where people sit. Have a big problem with bags on seats.

One of the few advantages of being fat is that people rarely want to sit next to me on the bus, so my bag does in fact have its own seat!

Ugh what a lot of passive aggressive uptight people on this thread!

If you want to sit down, smile and ask nicely. Don't glare, tut, make snide comments or plonk your bottom down on bags without warning.

To be honest, if I was sitting in an aisle seat on a train I wouldn't budge up to the window if I'd selected the aisle. You could ask to get past to sit by the window yourself but standing and tutting isn't going to help!

I put my shopping bag on the seat next to me if there's room and I don't care who knows it. I don't think it takes precedence over someone needing a seat though.

That said some shrew insisted on sitting beside me the other day even though there were approximately 10 double seats available. There was not enough room to get my bag on the floor, which had someone's takeaway debris there anyway but just enough room between my knees and the front wall of the bus that I couldn't prop it up properly.

I have arranged to have her killed.

I treasure the memory of the woman who sat down next to me on the train and huffed and puffed passive-aggressively for ten minutes until her husband turned up and said I was sitting in her seat. We checked our tickets and she was in the wrong carriage

I work with a woman who travels 300 miles for the first week of every month for work.

She takes a small suitcase on wheels with her, it's a lovely Radley case.
She booked her tickets months in advance, with reserved seats.
And she books two sets of tickets, one for her and one for her bag
Yes, she buys a ticket and reserves a seat for her bag!

Several times when I have traveled with her people have asked her to move her case, and she simply says "sorry I reserved this seat" and points to the little 'reserved' ticket. She has been challenged many times that buying a ticket doesn't entitle her to a seat, just to ride in the train, but because she reserved seats she will argue till the death for her right to jus it as she pleases.
I have even known people to get the conductor to complain about her refusing to move her bag, but because the seat is reserved she gets away with it.

She says in the four years she has been doing it (so 96 journeys, and probably 250 trains) she has never been made to move her bag.
And only once has she volunteered to move it, when a heavily pregnant woman who was wearing a nurses uniform and looked like she had just come off a long shift was standing and nobody else had offered her their seat.

I still find it really shocking when she argues with people for her right to have a bag seat.

fridge, I do that .

But I don't pull my legs in, I swing them out so there is enough space for people to get by. I don't know why I do it! I just prefer to sit in the aisle seat! And if I'm going to be getting off in a few stops, it just makes more sense.

Add message | Report | Message poster MrsBertMacklin Wed 13-Mar-13 17:48:48
South London Bus Bingo

Someone playing music through their phone
Someone smoking cannabis
Someone throwing their chicken skin/unwanted gherkins/chips on the floor
Someone preaching The Truth, which normally includes a bit about any non-Truth believers burning in Hell
Someone spitting onto the floor

Bonus points if your bus driver turns the engine off and refuses to continue the journey until Person X comes back downstairs to pay their fare / apologise for swearing at him.

MrsBert were you on the 319 with me today today? You had just described my journey this morning! Every bloody bit of it.

DP, DD and I were travelling to Brighton one weekend in October, that freaky hot weekend in 2011 (pre arranged visit, not ideal!) I was 34 weeks pregnant. We got on the train and could see seats were limited. DP stood with DD in the buggy by the doors. I spotted a seat but then saw a couple had placed their buggy between two sets of seats. It blocked two middle seats. I asked if they would move it so I could sit down. They said they would at next stop when people got off and the train got less packed. I said, this train will become more packed, not less. They just sat there, not moving the buggy. I said, please, I am pregnant, you should not put buggies here. (It was obvious, I do huge pregnant) but they just simpered.

There was a general sense of furtive looking away from the huge pregnant lady. Then a lady asked her daughter to move so I could it down. I was very grateful. The train got more packed and they didn't even try to fold or move the buggy and two seats were empty despite a packed train. .

I was brought up in Birmingham in 70s and it was the norm that children stood for adults. I don't know if it is the case now?